


Annoyances of Living

by spastasmagoria (Spastasmagoria)



Series: And Life Goes On [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Autistic!Sherlock, F/M, M/M, autistic!Molly, mostly sherlolly, ship all the things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 19:44:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 32,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2080791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spastasmagoria/pseuds/spastasmagoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's definitely with Molly, but things are complicated with John after they pretend to be married or a case, and Mummy has gone baby-crazy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fake Marriage

1\. 

Molly Hooper tossed her coat over the blue chair in front of the fireplace, the one that had come with her from her own flat. Sighing, she searched for the switch for the nearest lamp. It was dusk and the place was too dark to wander around in without stepping on some mess Sherlock had made and potentially killing herself. 

When she flipped the switch, she gasped, nearly jumping out of her skin. Sherlock was sitting in his chair, legs crossed, hands steepled in front of him. He was staring straight forward, not blinking. Problem solving time. She’d just leave him to it. 

Grabbing the stack of Post-It notes off the desk, she scribbled that she was going out with Mary soon and stuck it to his trouser leg. He’d see it. Probably.

If he had the spare brain power for it, he might worry if she wasn’t around in the evening. When he didn’t have all his processors working on a case, he worried a little too easily about her and her safety. Even though it was Wednesday. Which was obviously pub night.

But that was mostly because Sherlock seldom knew what day of the week it was. 

Going into the bedroom, she slid out of her jumper and tossed it in the corner with Sherlock’s dirty clothes. If he wasn’t going to use the hamper, then she wouldn’t either. She was far too tired to fight that battle right now. Finding some more comfortable clothes, she changed quickly, trying to avoid the chill in the room, then flopped diagonally onto the bed, face down for a few minutes’ rest. 

Massive hernias. That’s how today had gone. Why didn’t people just seek medical attention? Frederick Weinstein had been full of them. Thirty-nine kilograms of them. Eighty-six pounds. Nearly six and a quarter stone. Of hernias. And the distended stomach had not been a tipoff that something was wrong? 

She didn’t understand people sometimes. 

Inhaling, she breathed in the scent of the duvet. It smelt like dryer sheets and Sherlock. Who smelled most often of chemicals and sweat and some fancy mint and tea tree oil soap. It was nice and she was asleep as soon as she closed her eyes. 

##

She woke with a start when the bed bounced as someone landed on the bed next to her. "Sherlock..." She groaned. He should have known by now how much she hated being startled awake, even when he was busting to share something about a case. 

"Wrong sociopath," Mary joked, putting an arm around her. "Sherlock had a Post-It note stuck to his leg when he and John dashed out." She had an amused smirk on her face. "Are you too tired for the pub? We can stay in. I certainly have enough booze downstairs."

Molly rolled onto her side. "No, no. We can go out." She knew Mary didn't get out much. It was mostly work and home for her for now, with a little one to take care of. "Besides. I need something disgusting and fried. And Mrs. Hudson has Billie, right? Might as well use the free babysitting services wisely.” 

“True. True. It wouldn’t do to just sit around the flat while Billie throws one of her moods around just below us.” 

Molly smiled. The terrible twos were upon them, and Billie had turned into a cranky thing seemingly overnight. Molly had read that it was because the ability of a small child to understand outstripped their ability to communicate, and so they were in a constant state of frustration. This, of course, did not make the wailing coming from the basement flat any easier to deal with. 

“You know, someday we could find something to do that wasn’t pubs and fried food,” Molly suggested. 

“Who has the time or energy?”

Sitting up, Molly pushed her hair out of her face. “You’re right. I don’t even have the energy to be creative. I’d say shopping or something… but I’ve picked up Sherlock’s bad habit of getting everything online.” 

Mary sat up with a shrug. “That’s where Billie’s clothes have been coming from. And god, can she run through them. I almost think they should be disposable at this point. Three weeks, or a month and she’s out of them.” 

“Maybe she’ll be tall, like her parents.” Molly giggled and fell back onto the duvet. 

Mary shoved her gently, then got up. “That’s not even funny. And don’t let you hear John say that.” She grabbed Molly’s hands and pulled her to her feet. 

“How old is John? Still sensitive about his height?”

“You have no idea.” 

##

Molly was on her third beer and she had retied her ponytail sloppily on top of her head. She looked a little more intoxicated than she actually was, due to the sloppiness of exhaustion. Mary, of course, continued to look put together. She’d ask how Mary did it, but she did not want to be saddled with the obligation via obtaining such knowledge to always look good. 

“I’m just saying… if we all brought our own pens in protest, they’d have no incentive to buy pens. Not even shitty ones,” Mary pointed out. 

Molly wiped grease from her fingertips. “I just bring the ones I like. The pink and purple ones. I don’t fill out reports with them or anything. Just take notes. And it keeps Sherlock from whining like a spoilt child every time he pulls one from the pen well.” She giggled. “Because scribbling down an address in fuchia might undermine his mighty, mighty manhood.” 

Mary laughed louder than necessary. “He’s a brat.” 

“I keep telling him he is the reason rats eat their young.” His indignation was just too enjoyable and so she had no proper incentive to stop. 

“Oh my god. That’s far worse than saying anything about John’s height.” 

“I know.” Molly was finding hidden depths of teasing meanness, living with Sherlock. 

Mary pointed her bottle at Molly. “Anyways, if you insist on bringing pens, don’t let them see them. Ever.” 

“They’re just going to buy the lousy ones forever anyway. Now that they’ve determined the cost-savings (which really don’t exist) they’re never going to let go of that money, no matter how bad the pens are.” 

The pens, the pens. They always came back to the horrible pens that everyone was now buying in bulk. No one liked them, not even the administrators, but they just kept purchasing box after box. 

“I suppose so. But I almost want to lodge a protest and picket or something. It’s getting ridiculous.” 

Molly laughed. “We could have a mail-in campaign. Mail their lousy pens back to them.” 

“Wait, are we mailing the ones they bought? Or are we mailing pens we buy? Cos that’s like buying books to burn them.” Mary leaned heavily across the bar. 

“The ones from work. But that’s stealing office supplies…” she frowned and took another large sip of beer. More of a gulp, really. But ladies didn’t gulp. They sipped. “We could just burn to the ground whatever warehouse they keep getting them from.”

“I like your thinking, Molly Hooper. Arson solves a lot of problems.” 

They both laughed themselves silly, thinking up amusing ways to destroy the warehouse, the factory and the corporation that made the substandard pends. That was, until the the pub door flung open and cracked against its hinges like a saloon door in a western.

They both turned as Sherlock and John came rushing toward them. 

With gloved hands John grabbed his wife’s arms and kissed her quickly. Sherlock just smiled awkwardly at Molly. 

“So what’s all this?” Mary asked as John pulled away. 

“Sherlock and I need to be fake-married for a bit. For a case.” 

Mary turned to Molly who was staring at her beer, scratching her neck. “They need to be married for a bit.”

“Just for the weekend,” Sherlock explained. “Though since it is Wednesday--thank you for the note on my trousers, Molly--I suppose we’ll have to be married for five days in total. There’s a serial killer involved, which is my favorite type, but he and I need to be ‘involved’ involved, even though I’m not John’s type… unless I am. John, am I your type?” 

Molly rubbed her forehead, wishing Sherlock wasn’t talking so loud. She actually knew people here. “John, don’t answer that. If you two are going to be married for the weekend, what am I to do about your mother?” 

Sherlock waved a hand.”Tell her I’ve died or something. Tell her YOU have died. Just don’t be home when she comes.” 

“Oh my god,” Mary interjected, swiveling on her stool to look them both over with contempt. “You are not being fake-married, if it’s just to avoid Sherlock’s parents.” 

“There’s actually a real serial killer,” John promised in all sincerity. He unzipped the top of his coat. “And he likes to kill with knives.” He showed her the slash in his shirt, and the cut against his collarbone. “Now, do we have permission to be fake married, or not?” 

“You could have just called,” Mary said by way of reason. 

Sherlock grabbed Molly gently by the arm and popped her off the stool. “I need my pathologist too.” 

Molly pulled her arm out of his grasp. “I’ve been drinking. I’m not going into work smelling like a brewery and making bad decisions.” 

“Nonsense, you’ve had three beers in two hours. By the time we get to the morgue you’ll be sober. Well, mostly sober. I’ll know if you’re sober if you don’t start pining about how Toby might need a little brother or sister.” 

“Sherlock, can’t the night staff just take care of it?” Mary slid between Molly and the man. 

“They could. But I don’t trust them. I know Molly won’t muck it up.” 

Molly let out a deep sigh. “Is anyone’s life in immediate danger?”

“Well, I did say for the weekend, so not immediate. I mean, unless you mean Saturday. That’s kind of immediate, isn’t it?” 

Molly gestured to the barman that they were done. “I’m not going in tonight. They’ll be just as dead in the morning. and I’m going to tell you the same thing. No running around all night unless it is absolutely necessary. I am a pathologist. I am not YOUR pathologist. I’m just the one that sleeps with you. And Morgan is on the night shift right now and can do just as fine of a job as long as you don’t act like a total twat.” 

He opened his mouth to say something but didn’t. 

“She has you there, mate. Let’s just get signed up for this marriage counseling thing and get on with it.” 

“Alright, but I am not sleeping on the right side of the bed…” 

They dashed out again as quickly as they had come. A girl in a black apron shut the door behind them. 

Mary sighed. “We’re going to have to find yet another place to drink, aren’t we?” 

Molly looked around at everyone staring at them. “Yes. Yes we are. And the next one we do not tell them the address or name of.” 

##

The heavy-set woman with the big chest squealed at the sight of the baby, her necklace gingling. Oh look at you, my how you’ve grown!” Mrs.Holmes took the baby instantly from Mary without even asking permission. 

Billie giggled. “Granmummy!” 

Behind Mrs Holmes, Molly clenched her eyes shut. No one had told her to call the woman that. They weren’t even remotely related. 

“Well,” Mary said with false enthusiasm. “Still as taken with you as the last visit.” Once everyone was in the flat, she shut the door, letting out a deep breath. Molly had conned her into this and now she was stuck. Murdering Sherlock seemed like a very real possibility. 

“And where’s that boy of mine?” the woman asked, bouncing Billie gently as she looked around the flat. 

“Oh, um, he’s on a case,” Molly explained as cheerfully as she could. “So I suppose it’s just us.” 

“That Sherlock, always running off. There was one time when I had to send the police after him. Do you have to do that, dear? Send the police?” She sat down carefully with the child. 

“No, usually the police are with him.” Certainly not the case today but omission was probably the best policy. 

Mary smiled brightly, rubbing her hands together. “And John’s gone off after him, so it’s just us girls. Tea? Wine? Sedatives?” 

Mrs. Holmes laughed. “You are a funny one, Mary. Tea will be fine. I save the sedatives for when my husband is snoring.” 

Molly let out a nervous chuckle.

“Oh dear,”Mrs. Holmes said in all sympathy. “Sherlock’s still doing the horrible honking snore, isn’t he? He deviated his septum jumping off the garage one summer, and he’s never slept right since.” 

Mary’s smile was genuine and tight. Blackmail material was always good. 

Molly sat in her own chair, turning it toward the sofa. “No, no. It’s fine.” Honestly, Molly’s shifts at work were even more erratic than usual, and she always came home exhausted. A train could cruise through their flat and she’d not notice. “If he does, I sleep right through it.” 

“Oh good, good. Not getting enough sleep can lead to ovulation problems.” 

Nervously, Molly rose, before she’d even gotten comfortable. “Let me make sure Mary’s using the right tea.” She dashed off to the kitchen, despite how rude it probably was seen. Molly leaned against the counter, next to Mary. “She’s been here three minutes and she’s already mentioned ovulation.” 

“As soon as I get this done, I’ll be in there to distract her. She always wants to know everything about Billie. If that doesn’t work, tell her to pick on Mycroft.” 

Shoulders slumped in defeat, Molly returned to the sitting room. “Yes, yes, she’s using the right tea.” 

Billie was playing with Mrs Holmes’ necklace, fascinated by the colored beads. “There’s a wrong kind of tea?” 

Molly wrung her hands, knots in her stomach. “Oh. Um. Well, we have the emergency tea.” It was in a tin. It was loose leaf and no one wanted to deal with it. Apparently it had been in the flat when John had moved in. “So. You and Billie seem to be getting along.” Billie was now chewing on her necklace and really didn’t care about anything at the moment. 

“We always get along. Don’t we? I wore this one just for you. You like it, don’t you?” She jingled her necklace, but didn’t take it away from the baby. Molly wondered how Sherlock managed to survive into adulthood. 

Molly sat back down in her chair, trying to relax into it, but finding every muscle tense. “She’s quiet, at least.” 

She waved her hand, dismissing the idea. “Oh, they’re always better-behaved for someone else. So don’t ever say anything about it. Let them think your child is a saint all the time. It’s better that way.” 

“We’ll have to tell her mother.” She looked up both in hope and desperation as Mary came back into the room with a tray with cups and the pot. “Mrs. Holmes says you’re not supposed to let on they’re anything but angels,” Molly offered in cheerful authority. 

Mary smiled tightly as she poured. “I try not to. Though I think everyone at the grocery knows she’s part howler monkey. Which she got from her dad’s side. Obviously.” 

Needing something to hide behind, Molly grabbed her cup as soon as it was poured and held it up to her mouth, not letting the sugarless, milkless scalding liquid touch her lips. 

“Is that son of mine behaving himself? Better yet, is Mycroft getting out of his office ever? I swear, he must never go home. Every time I call, he can’t talk, he’s in the middle of something important.” 

Mary shrugged. “We only see Mycroft when he wants something, really.” She glanced at Molly, who slowly lowered her cup. “That’s really about it, isn’t it?” 

Molly shrugged. “I suppose. He and I don’t… talk.” Usually when he showed up, she left the room. She just didn’t LIKE him. And if he took it personally, he never let on. In some ways, it was an ideal relationship. 

“That’s how he put on all that weight, you know. Never leaving his office or his club. He had this ruddy face. He just looked unhealthy. And I’d say, Mycroft, I know you don’t want to listen to your old mother, and I don’t care that you’ve put on a few pounds, but the ruddy face has to go. You look like a bloody alcoholic. Too much duck liver, that’s what I say…” 

Molly had always thought it rude when Sherlock tuned people out. Clients, his family. Her. But now she was beginning to see the benefit. If she just listened to the drone of his mother’s voice, and not the words, it was almost soothing. 

But eventually Mary nudged her. “Oh sure, we do that all the time.” 

Blinking twice, she looked to Mary for help. 

“We love taking Billie on girls-only adventures,” Mary supplied. 

Molly just nodded vigorously. No they didn’t. The only time she and Mary left the building together was to go to the pub. Sometimes the corner shop for “supplies” which mainly consisted of wine and chocolate when their partners were unbearable together. But Billie really never left with them. Mary didn’t get out much without the baby, and so the little princess was NOT invited to pub night, or any night that ended in them sitting in the Watson’s flat, complaining about John and Sherlock while watching movies from the 90s that they really didn’t care about. 

“Well, it’s always good to get them out. Fresh air, mental stimulation… can’t start too early with those things, my dear.” And of course she was looking directly at Molly. 

“I’ll remember that.” She went back to hiding behind the tea cup, which was a bit cooler than before. “If it’s ever necessary.” 

The woman simply blinked. In the same odd pattern that Sherlock used when he just couldn’t quite grasp what he’d been told. 

“We’re really not planning for children.” There. She’d said it. She’d finally been honest, instead of avoiding the situation. 

“Not planning--well, what happens if you’re surprised? Surprises are the best ones, actually, Sherlock was--” 

Molly held up a hand. “I’m currently using a form of birth control that is 99.8% effective.” 

“Accidents happen, you know. A missed pill here or there…” the woman forced through tight lips. 

Molly rolled up her sleeve to show a tiny scar. “It’s an implant. It’s good for five years. No accidents.” She felt angry she had to tell someone this information. ‘We aren’t planning to have children’ should have been enough. 

“But you can always get it removed when you’re ready, right?” 

“There is no ready. I work a ridiculous schedule and your son is always dashing off into danger. I’m about to attach his keys to him via a dog collar and very long chain because he keeps losing them and I haven’t slept more than four hours a night in the last two weeks. Oh yeah, and we let Billie play with a human skull when we’re sitting her. There is NOTHING about that which says we’d be good parents. I know my limits. He knows his limits. Being in charge of a whole other person is beyond that. If you want grandchildren, bother Mycroft.” She got to her feet, angry tears in her eyes, and grabbed her coat. “Mary… talk with her about potty training or something.” 

Sliding her coat on, she slipped out the door and slammed it, hearing it lock behind her. Clenching her eyes shut, she touched her pockets, realizing her keys were near the sink. And her handbag was in the bedroom. With her wallet in it. “Shit,” she whispered, clenching her eyes shut. 

Making a face, she steadied herself and went down the steps quietly, then out the front door. Leaning on the stone facade next to it, she let out a few cleansing breaths, trying not to let the old habit of panicking overtake her. 

She pulled out her phone, which she’d had the foresight to leave in her trouser pocket since she’d gotten off work earlier this morning. 

\--So, I sort of blew up at your mother.--

She didn’t really expect a response. It was the weekend. Sherlock was off, very busy being married to John. Yes, yes. Serial killers and such. Those were terrible. Their work often ended up on her table, and she felt a gnawing sort of empathetic loss for the families involved. But at the same time, she didn’t wonder if it wasn’t an opportunity for those two to play a bit of house and have it be completely acceptable. It didn’t bother her, necessarily. It just annoyed her that they were so pathetic about it. 

Turning up the collar on her coat, she wished she’d had her scarf. She had no idea where she was going or how long she’d be gone, but she walked briskly, toward no destination at all. Just streets and crosswalks and the sounds of annoying cars and annoying people chattering away like people held conversations every day without losing their cool. Her phone vibrated. 

\--My mother does that to people. Did you tell her to get a puppy?--

Molly sighed, but smiled. He usually could cheer her up, just by saying what he was thinking. And thinking about his mother deflecting her inexplicable craving for grandchildren onto some unsuspecting boxer puppy amused her. 

\--No. I should have. She got me so mad I even told her things she really didn’t have a right to know.--

It was another two streets before she got a response, which she wasn’t even expecting because she knew he was busy. 

\--You showed her the weird arm birth control thing, didn’t you?-- 

Molly didn’t respond. 

\--I’m sure it’s fine. She’ll have forgiven and forgotten by tomorrow. If not: defenestration--

Molly stopped dead in her tracks, laughing loudly at the message. Matricide shouldn’t be funny. But still, at the moment, it was really the only thing she had to hold on to that brought her any joy, considering how badly she’d botched things. 

She shoved her hands into her pockets and kept walking. No money, no debit card, no keys… She supposed if she were Sherlock, she would simply storm into Angelo’s, claim he was watching for a suspect and spend three hours on tea and waiting for the fires to die down at home. 

But that wasn’t her, was it? He would just march into any place at all, head held high, bravado turned on full-blast and do whatever he pleased. Molly sometimes had trouble using a public toilet without permission. She didn’t mind when he did the bravado thing for a case, but when he did it while she was along, just for fun, she always felt like she’d die of embarrassment. No matter how good that lobster had been. 

Wiggling her toes in her shoes, she estimated how long before her feet were uncomfortably numb and her nose started running. Maybe half an hour or twenty minutes in this weather. She hadn’t heard the report this morning, but she could see the white vapor of her breath in front of her, and knew it was as chilly as she felt. 

She was a little miffed with Sherlock, if she were to be honest. He was off playing ‘marital troubles’ with John (and weren’t they always half-married? They had an unhealthy and codependent joining at the hip), and she was stuck with his mother. Sure he’d told her to cancel or fob it off, but he should have known she couldn’t, really. She just felt so… rude? 

Well, it certainly would have been kinder than going into a tirade then storming out. Now she’d made things complicated. Likely Sherlock’s mother would now give her a lecture about how artificial hormones were making her cranky and cats settled once they had a litter…

There was a cast-iron skillet sitting on the stove that they used for eggs. She could barely lift the thing, but right now she wanted to smash it around until a lot of things were broken. 

Taking her hands out of her warm pockets, she rubbed them over her face and moaned. She did need to get it together. 

A car slowed at the kerb, and she was afraid to take her hands away from her eyes. Mycroft. It was always Mycroft when a car pulled up, and it looked like there was about to be a mob hit.


	2. Marriage Counseling For Dummies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John suffer marriage therapy. Apparently John and Sherlock have more issues with each other than they thought. Molly actually manages to make Donovan uncomfortable.

2.

“Mr. Sigerson, if you can’t put your phone away, I will ask you to hand it over,” the group leader said. 

Sighing, Sherlock looked around at everyone in the circle of chairs, then slid the phone into his breast coat pocket. Molly needed a bit of saving, and he was sort of almost feeling guilty leaving her to deal with his mother on her own. No. It was real guilt, he decided. But it was mixed with a sense of self-preservation and relief. Which probably gave him more guilt. He hated guilt. It was an annoying emotion and he didn’t like it. 

Nox, husband of Lizzie The Kleptomaniac was talking now about some unfortunate incident involving department store theft and time spent at a police station. Sherlock sighed in visible boredom. Messaging with Molly was far more fun than listening to everyone’s problems. Someone in this group was about to get Serial Killed and they were listening to Nox go on about spending a night in jail. 

“Who HASN’T spent a night in jail?” Sherlock blurted out suddenly. “If you haven’t, you’re just not living. Or you’re lying about it. So what, she’s a clepto? Who cares! You’re cheating on her with the nanny! Lizzy--get some therapy. Really. I can recommend a guy.” He slumped in his chair, exhausted. This group bullshit was bullshit. 

“You’re sleeping with--” Lizzie gasped then stormed out. After a brief hesitation, Nox followed.

The group leader, Shawn, a forty-something man in a faded t-shirt with a clipboard, scowled. 

John slipped his hand into Sherlock’s and squeezed it. “You’ll have to excuse him. He’s preoccupied.” 

“Well, if we’re going to work on relationship problems, you need to be completely here. And not tormenting the other participants.”

Sherlock clamped his jaw shut. This was one of those times where anything he said would be the wrong thing to say. 

John smiled tightly. “He’s, uh… getting texts from the surrogate.” He chuckled uncomfortably. “Soon-to-be dad, you know how it is.” 

Sherlock wiped a hand over his face. Fucking babies. That’s all anyone ever worried about. “Yeah. Surrogate. Did I mention this fatherhood thing was HIS idea?” He scowled at John. His mother was baby crazy, John already had one, and spent time worrying if Billie needed a sibling. Sherlock had a cat, and a skull and a niece, and he was fine with that, thank you very much. 

“Ok. We’ll discuss that a little later. I think we need to take a break.” Shawn stood up, taking a deep breath, looking at his watch. “Let’s take… twenty minutes? No. Half an hour. Then we’ll finish this up with Emma and Susan, and it’ll be time to break for lunch. 

Everyone got up, making their way to the doors, headed for smoke breaks and bathroom stops. Shawn got in front of Sherlock when he tried to escape. “This isn’t going to work unless you respect everyone in the group. I know these things are painful to talk about, and you’re worried, but we do need to let everyone air their complaints in their own time.” 

Sherlock pinched the bridge of his nose. “I have to make a phone call.” Pulling out his phone, he ducked around Shawn and headed for the wall of windows in the rear of the group room. “Mycroft? Favor?” 

John sighed. “I’m sorry about him. He doesn’t like… group things.” 

“Don’t apologize for him. His behavior is his own behavior. You are not responsible for him.” 

“Oh, you’d be surprised.” 

“So. You two are expecting. I didn’t see that on the initial paperwork.” 

John shifted in discomfort. It had been the only thing he could think of that would merit Sherlock’s level of behavior. Other than Sherlock being Sherlock of course. “He’s not very good at filling out forms.” 

“He doesn’t seem excited about having a baby.” 

“It’s… complicated?” 

“Having a baby is a big step. Both of you have to want it.” 

John chuckled. Oh god his life was so complicated. “At the start… things were different.” Not entirely untrue. “Maybe it’s cold feet?” 

“Maybe.” But Shawn looked concerned. “Why don’t you both get something to drink. Maybe take a walk. I will make sure that you two discuss this with Rianna in one-on-one. It seems like a hot button issue.” He marked something on his clipboard. John glanced over at it quickly, then nodded. “That would be great. See you in about twenty-five minutes then?” 

Nodding, John walked over to the windows, where Sherlock was staring out, lost in thought. “Interesting development,” he muttered. “After I talked to Shawn, he underlined my name and circled yours on his clipboard. Do you think he’s the one?” 

“Mmm,” Sherlock muttered, staring out at the artificial lake in front of the counseling center. “Why mark it?” 

“He said he would have Rianna bring it up in one-on-one sessions.” 

Sherlock squinted, then glanced at his phone. He hated being distracted. Molly was distracting him. His mother was distracting him, and he hadn’t even spoken to her in three weeks. “The likelihood of Rianna being the murderer is statistically lowered because she is female, but I suppose anything is possible. Though I personally believe she is too small to have been the party who slit your collar bone. Shawn wouldn’t leave a paper trail. There’s someone else. I don’t know who yet.” 

“How’s Molly?” John tried to change the subject. 

Sherlock shrugged. “I think she’s run away from home to join the circus. I had to do the most distasteful thing I have done this week and get Mycroft to pick her up. She wouldn’t have texted me if she’d have had her wallet or keys.” He leaned against the window. “You know I’m rubbish at running two processes at once. I either need to worry about this murderer or I need to worry about Molly. I can’t do both.” 

“I thought Mary was supposed to be keeping things down to a mild roar.” 

“Apparently not. And apparently thrusting your child at my mother did not provide ample distraction.” He sighed. “Molly keeps telling me I’m not allowed to push her out a window.” 

John slid his arm around Sherlock, trying to be comforting in some sort of substantial way. “It’s kind of illegal to kill your mother. We’ll find some way to properly tell her to fuck off, and you’ll get some breathing room.” 

Sherlock arched his eyebrow skeptically. “Where do you think my brother got his ability to suck all the life out of a room?” 

“Point. Still. Kids aren’t bad.” 

“John, look at me. Is there anything at all about me that says parent?” 

“Well--” 

“That’s a no, then. We have a murder to solve. Preferably before it happens. Then we can deal with this whole… catastrophe that is my relationship with my parents. One crisis at a time. God, what I wouldn’t give for a terrorist threat right about now…” 

John frowned. 

“Not good?” 

“It makes you sound a little deranged.” 

“Nobody likes the truth.” 

“Look. Let’s get some juice or something. You’re grumpy when your blood sugar is low.” 

“I hate you right now,” Sherlock muttered. 

John gently guided Sherlock from the room. “Yeah. I know. Juice. A banana wouldn’t kill you either.” 

“I don’t eat on cases,” Sherlock reminded as they passed through the doorway. 

“Shut up and eat the damned banana before I cram it down your throat.” 

Sherlock smirked. “Didn’t know you felt that way.” 

John pushed him through the door. “Don’t you inuendo me.” 

##

Molly fell face first long-ways across the bed. “Then he defended his mother,” she said into the mattress. 

“What?” Mary asked, sitting next to her. 

She forgot, only Sherlock could understand her mattress-speak. She lifted her head up a bit. “Mycroft. Mycroft defended his mother. To me.” 

Mary laughed. “Mycroft did? What’s he playing at?” 

“He must be feeling the baby pressure too. And he has to take her to dinner tonight.” She sighed. “Better him than me. I refuse to deal with her without backup.” 

Mary flopped on the bed next to her, so their heads were next to each other. “Let’s see. She’s made you vomit. She’s made you dump an entire tray of tea on her carpet, she’s personally purchased you an ovulation detection kit… and now she’s got you yelling and storming off. Have I captured all of her sins?”

Molly bashed her head off of the duvet. “And she got Sherlock a sperm count testing kit. He threw the kit out the window, instead of her. It hit a pedestrian.” She’d laughed. It hadn’t really soothed Sherlock’s damaged ego. Then, he couldn’t storm off because there was an angry pedestrian waiting for him, so he pushed his mother out the door and told her to adopt a puppy. 

“Oh god. I didn’t hear about that.” 

“I want a restraining order.” Molly pressed her face to the mattress again, unable to deal with reality. 

Mary let it go for a bit. She knew Molly. Her life had been orderly and self-contained before she moved in with Sherlock. There were no strange visitors at all hours, there were no crazy parents. It had been as much of an adjustment for her as for Sherlock. The actual getting together and having a relationship thing Mary had only sort of seen coming. Well, she’d been hopeful about. But things had changed, and continued changing and neither of them dealt very well with it.

“If you want to see something cute, Billie is playing ball with the skull.” Mary had given up on not letting Billie play with it. 

Molly rolled over and sat up. “That is kind of adorable.” 

The chubby girl with the golden tufts of hair was rolling her ball to the skull, who obviously didn’t catch it. It would bounce off at some odd angle, and she’d chase after it, laughing. “Catch it!” she would tell the skull, performing the ritual again. 

“She’s clever.” Molly liked the girl. “She’s two already. It seems like yesterday she was just a little wiggler, trying to roll over on her blanket.” 

“Sometimes it seems like it’s been just a day. And sometimes it seems like a lifetime.” Mary smiled nostalgically. “I think John’s feeling broody.” 

“More than you?” Molly had no idea how people made decisions on how to have more children. 

“When his lungs are the ones being kicked, I’ll start nesting a little harder.” She watched Billie pat the skull on the head, and left the ball for it. Toby came over and climbed on top, sitting on the skull with his legs tucked under, like a turkey. He was fully ready to hatch the skull into some sort of weird unmentionable monster. “I don’t know. I think about it. Who doesn’t?” She wrinkled her nose. “I still have a few good breeding years left in me. I don’t need to decide anything right now. Besides, I’m less inclined to go through it again when my husband’s off being married to Sherlock.” 

That did make Molly laugh. “They’re so grossly obvious about it. It’s embarrassing.” 

Mary nodded. “I don’t even tease John about it any more. I just give him a look. He knows what I’m talking about. Though sometimes I wish they’d just fuck and get it over with.” 

Molly’s face went red and she covered her eyes. They talked around it, but that was the first time either one of them had confronted the situation head-on. “I can’t even imagine how that would work.” 

“Nor could they. That’s the problem.” 

##

Rianna, a small woman in a large chair, looking through paperwork on her imposing wooden desk. 

Sherlock and John sat on the other side of the desk in much shorter leather chairs, both shifting uncomfortably. Sherlock especially didn’t want to be there. Rianna was not the killer, therefore they were wasting their time sitting here. But they had to keep up the pretense of the couples counseling weekend participation. 

“So tell me about the baby.” 

Sherlock’s fingernails clawed into the leather of the arms of the chair. “Can we not talk about babies?” 

“Well, it does seem to be a point of contention. You don’t seem to be very excited. How did you two decide to go with a surrogate.” 

Sherlock clenched his eyes shut. “It’s complicated.” John had committed them to the worst lie ever. “Babies are fine. Children are fine. Everything is fine.” 

“You seem a little… tense.” 

“John is… broody.” 

“Hey!” 

Sherlock glared at him. “Don’t say you’re not. And you’re projecting that on to me. When I have enough rubbish to deal with from my mother.” 

“What do I have to do with YOUR mother?” 

“Everything. EVERYTHING. You visit her like she is your own mother, or something. And you feed into her grandchild craziness. It’s a madness and a disease and you are all ill.” 

Rianna leaned forward. “Ok. I think we have something very serious to discuss here.” 

Sherlock sat back in the chair, slumping. He’d allowed himself to be goaded into this. “Yes. This one wants a whole house full of blonde haired screaming children. My mother wants a house full of dark haired screaming children. I just want to jump off of a tall building every time I think about it.” 

John glared at Sherlock, his jaw clenching and unclenching. “That’s just how you solve everything, isn’t it? Avoid it, and jump off a building. Well, not this time. I’m tired of your--your--you. Everything is about you. Your mother wants grandchildren. SO WHAT? Be a man and tell her the truth, instead of letting Molly deal with her for an entire weekend. Being a parent is great. It’s wonderful. It’s the best thing that can ever happen to you, and you act like your life will absolutely end.” 

Sherlock threw his arms up in the air. “Yeah? How am I supposed to go on cases with a child about?” 

“The same way I do, idiot. I am the one always following after you. You act like you would be solely responsible for a child. But that’s you all over, isn’t it? Lone wolf. God forbid you drop that… arrogant collar-popping act and just trust that the people around you will come through in the end. But oh wait. Alone is what you have, isn’t it?” 

John’s fist slammed into the arm of the chair and he turned to the therapist. His jaw worked itself around, like he was masticating the entire situation, and then he pointed violently at Sherlock. “Do you want to know what makes me the most angry about him? He can’t just TALK. God forbid he say what’s on his mind. The sky might fall and the world will end. In the mean time, the rest of us can just go fuck off” 

Rianna put her hands up trying to diffuse the moment. “I think you’ve hit on a very good point. No one can guess what anyone else is thinking. We need to talk to each other and keep lines of comm--” 

Sherlock stood up suddenly. “No. John started this. If he has something to say, he should say it. This isn’t about how every single person around me has some kind of baby obsession. This is about--you know what. Well. I already said I was sorry. And it’s been YEARS. And if you’re not over it, well--then I don’t know what.” He stormed out of the counselor's office, letting the heavy wooden door slam closed dramatically behind him. 

John laughed bitterly and shook his head. “Everything’s about him, isn’t it?” 

Before their therapist could respond, John got up to follow. “Excuse me while I soothe his bruised ego.” Frowning, John followed after Sherlock, wondering exactly how they’d gone from him forcing food down Sherlock’s throat to dredging up very old wounds.

##

Fortunately Sherlock was in their assigned room when John caught up to him. He was lying on the bed, staring up at the wall. 

“So what the hell was THAT all about?” 

“I feel like I don’t know you.” They’d been harping on “I feel “ statements all weekend. There. Sherlock had just used one. 

“Sherlock, how many years have we known each other? Look--you just pushed some buttons. Mentioning jumping off buildings. Just don’t do that again, alright? I don’t need any more flashbacks.” 

Sherlock sat up suddenly, his eyes wide. He’d never considered that, really. “Flashbacks.” 

“Yeah, watching your best friend kill himself tends to give you a bit of PTSD.” He sighed, sitting on the bed next to Sherlock. “It’s fine, we’re fine. Just don’t mention that ever again?” 

Sherlock budged over, making room for John. “I can do that.” He was quiet after that, staring forward. “You know,” he said finally. “Playing the part of an arguing couple stopped being playing about midday yesterday.” He sighed. “And I’m having trouble concentrating on the case at hand. Our therapist isn’t the right height. The two group leaders are right handed. I’m running out of suspects, I have no new data, and all I have really discovered is that no one believes me when I say that I would be a terrible parent and my life is not conducive to having a tiny offspring milling about. And as if my own feelings on the matter had no bearing.” 

John groaned and put an arm around Sherlock’s shoulder. They’d gotten a bit touchy in the last year or so. Well, John had got touchy. Sherlock just accepted it without squirming away or mentioning the new habit. “I’m not saying you need to procreate. Molly would probably rather kill your mother outright than have a kid, it sounds like.” 

The anger in Molly’s eyes that didn’t match with the smile on her face every time someone mentioned children was enough to convince John that there were no kids to be expected from that relationship. 

He and Mary hadn’t exactly been trying, but there’d been a handful of times where she’d been less than consistent with the pill. Didn’t take it until lunch time once or twice, had forgotten them all together a few times...and one of those had surely coincided with one of their little adventures, possibly the one she’d talked him into having in public. And really, they did both like a bit of danger. 

Birth control was nearly a hundred percent effective if used properly. But they liked to live on the edge, he supposed. So they’d not exactly been careful about being careful. But it wasn’t like they’d been trying. He liked to think of them more as lazy contraceptionists than anything else. 

“The thing I think I’m trying to say is, if you can keep your shit together for more than five minutes, I think you’d be a great dad. Any kid you had would never be bored, that’s for sure. You’re good with Billie, she likes you. You’ve never put her in danger or left her unattended. So yeah. You two don’t want kids--whatever. Molly works crazy shifts and you run around trying to get yourself killed. But I get pissed off when I hear you selling yourself short. You’re not incompetent, and you could certainly be responsible for another person. If you put your mind to it.” 

“And if I didn’t?” Sherlock’s eyebrow arched. 

“Fortunately you live in a building with a lot of people willing to pick up the slack So just shut up about how you couldn’t possibly do it. Especially when you have no intention of.” He nudged Sherlock’s shoulder with his head. “There. Now that that’s settled. Do you want me to dig around a little more while you think your thinky-thoughts?”

Sherlock made a face. “Don’t make my process sound so juvenile.” 

“Thinky-thoughts,” John teased, nudging him again. “Just remember, you’re an arse and a drama queen, but you’re not a bad person, ok?” He ruffled Sherlock’s hair and got up. “I’ll go see what I can bumble into. You do your thing.” 

When he left, Sherlock was slouched on the bed again, staring at the ceiling. 

John had no idea how someone with such a massive ego could sell himself so short. 

##

Molly had worked until seven in the morning on Sunday, then had come home and crashed hard on the sofa. She slept peacefully until the doorbell rang once. She knew what that was the universal symbol for--cops. She smashed her head further into the sofa for a moment, trying to wake up properly. But she heard feet on the steps and knew someone had let them in. Not clunky enough for Lestrade. You could always hear him coming a mile away. He always walked like he was carrying the whole world on his shoulders. 

there was a single knock and Sgt. Donovan came clapping through with just enough angry purpose that Molly sat up on the sofa. She rubbed her eyes and realized she was still wearing her coat,handbag still next to her. ”Sherlock isn’t here right now.”She blinked a few times. 

“I can see that. I’m here for the slasher case files. I know he lifted them.” 

Molly looked around the flat. “I didn’t see anything around in the last few days that looked like it came from you guys.” Focusing on the desk, she made a face. “We can always look there.” Stacks of paper, half a brick, a glass case containing a wasp nest… Decades-old newspapers. No one cherished the thought of touching Sherlock’s stacks. Ever. 

She slid out of her coat to help the detective. She had worked with Donovan a few times. She found the woman to be pushy, but who didn’t have to be, with the people she worked with? Molly was glad she hadn’t had to really shove her way through the ranks. She had a speciality within a specialized field, and so it had been more a matter of waiting for pasty white men with ruddy faces to sucuumb to inevitable heart failure. Which had happened before she was thirty-five. She only had two people to report to in the morgue now. 

“Sorry, I try to get him to clean it up but he always says it IS clean.” She rifled through the papers with Donovan. “Don’t touch that bottle. I don’t know where it’s been.” She harped about proper labeling but it never seemed to get anywhere. John had only been asking for biohazard stickers and that had been too much. 

Donovan pulled her hand away. “And you live with this?” 

Molly scrunched her nose. “It’s cleaner than when John lived here. So we know he can be taught.” 

Sally looked around, making note of the change. “And he puts up with all the cat kitsch?” 

“You just need to know what ear to twist,” she said absently, pulling a police file out from a stack of television ads for shows neither of them watched. “Is this it?”

“No, but we’ve been missing that one for weeks.” She ripped it out of Molly’s hand.

“Hmm. He might have it with him. He’s not expected to pop up again until tomorrow, I’m afraid. I’ll scold him properly about taking files again. He used to have half my cold cases from the morgue if I didn’t get after him.” Molly absently opened a few drawers and flipped through the papers, pulling out an unbuttered piece of toast. “Lovely.” 

“So which are you, then?” 

Molly looked up at the detective, not understanding. 

“Nursemaid, mother, girlfriend…” 

Shrugging timidly, Molly threw the toast away in the nearest bin. “Just the flatmate. I was paying more rent for less space. He needs someone to keep him from doing stupid things. It worked itself out.” She could have told the truth. But she was growing ever more tired of defending Sherlock and it was the path of least resistance. And it wasn’t like Sherlock went around declaring publicly that they were in a semi-proper relationship. 

“Just a flatmate.” 

Molly smiled. “Just a flatmate.” 

“I see.” 

“Nothing exciting. I have the room upstairs. I hide there when he’s being too ridiculous. But Barts is short staffed right now, so I’m hardly ever here.” she bit her cheek. “It might be downstairs. He’s been hiding stuff in John’s flat. Get Mary to check behind the big portrait in the sitting room.” 

She walked Sergeant Donovan to the door. “Tell her I sent you. She’ll completely understand.” 

“I can’t believe you and her just think this is normal.” 

“Normal is relative. I suppose. I’ve certainly had my arm in more dead bodies than Sherlock or John. I’m the creeper, if you think about it like that.” She knew what Donovan thought of Sherlock. ‘Creeper’ was putting it mildly. “Though John’s had his arms in more live ones.” Molly thought about it for a minute. “IS that creepier? Surgeons are all weird. Someone said you have to think you’re god to be a trauma surgeon. Maybe John’s the sociopath.” She’d never really thought about it like that. 

“Um… right. Downstairs. Behind the portrait.” Sally dashed down the steps without any further questioning. 

Molly was glad. Sometimes her mind went to weird places. And when she was uncomfortable, it all just came spilling out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Johnlock intensifies. There are penises in faces. That's all I can say.


	3. .The Naked Detective

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John are caught in a... compromising position. Molly explains why hitting someone with your penis is wrong. Sherlock attempts to play educational games with Billie. Serial killing ensues.

3.

Lestrade ran a hand through his hair. Looking around at the stone house and the red and blue lights reflecting off the windows. “Can someone explain to me, what the hell you two were doing, in the vicarage, with his dick in your face?” He sighed to look at them both. John had a gash on his forehead and Sherlock had two bruised and swollen eyes. 

“We were hiding from the murderer,” Sherlock said, as if he were talking to a small child. But then, he gave Billie more credit than some of Lestrade’s people. 

“Sherlock, I think he’s referring to the part where your trousers were down and I kept getting hit in the face.” Handcuffed in front, John awkwardly used a cloth to wipe the pooling blood off his forehead again. “Because I am still unclear on it myself.” 

Sherlock sighed, rolling his eyes. “We needed to have a reason to be there. It’s perfectly normal for a couple sharing a room with another couple to seek out… privacy.” 

“But if we were hiding from the vicar and trying to come up with a reason for being--” John threw his hands up in the air. “Can you arrest me for tresspassing? I might get a bit of sleep then. BEFORE my wife kills me.” 

Lestrade made a face. “Oh don’t worry, we’ll talk about charges soon. Unless you explain to me why the nice middle-aged lady over there who called the police on you two deviants is the person who killed seven people with a knife. And Sherlock, take that idiotic fake goatee off. You look like a teenager who can’t grow a proper beard.” 

John looked away, refusing to say anything. 

“What? Yes. Thank you.” He scowled at both of them. “I grew this just for this case. Don’t mock my… follicular deficits.” 

“No, trust me, I am not laughing. I have a dead body two miles up the road, and my consulting detective smacking his best friend around with his penis on hallowed church ground.” 

John sighed. “We figured out it was the vicar when we realized that several of the couples were going to services down the road. That’s how she was choosing them. Right height, right build for whoever was trying to vivisect me on Wednesday when we were up here looking around. And I say we because Sherlock wasn’t even going to come down here this morning, until he found out it got us out of group therapy if he did. So here we are.” 

“I’m still waiting for an explanation for the whole indecent exposure thing.” Lestrade’s lips pursed tightly together. 

Grinding his teeth, John glared at Sherlock. “We were supposed to be mimicking oral sex. Someone wasn’t supposed to get a raging hardon and hit me in the face with it.” 

“There was a sudden draft,” Sherlock replied, trying to maintain some semblance of dignity. 

“I’m not talking to you ever again,” John asserted, then turned around. “Can you take the handcuffs off?” 

“Not until I’m sure whether or not I am bringing charges.” 

Sherlock’s nose wrinkled. “You’re not going to arrest us! We solved a multiple murder!” 

“Yeah, can we not? This one has a brother in high places and I...don’t.” 

Lestrade sighed. “Fine. But only because it looks really bad for the prosecution if their consultant gets arrested WITH the murderer.” He undid the handcuffs on John first, then Sherlock. “Look, what you two do in your personal time is not my business. I am not getting involved, or telling your partners. But having a blow job in the killer’s house is the stupidest bit of shit I’ve seen from you two. Possibly ever.” 

Sherlock rolled his eyes, as if it were logical and standard practice. “Can we just get to the part where I tell you how brilliant I am?” 

John rubbed his wrists with a sigh. Good old Sherlock, being Sherlock. 

John felt like he needed a holiday from his best friend. 

##

Molly was so tired she was nauseous, clammy and her heart was racing. She’d done another overnight, and here it was Monday afternoon, and Mrs. Holmes was sitting on the sofa, going on about something. It wasn’t babies. Molly was pretty sure of that. But she was just… going on. 

Mary was at work. Billie was at childcare. There was no deflecting, there was no escaping. 

“We could do lunch, you know. At that cafe downstairs. Then we’d see when he comes home.” 

Blinking twice, Molly caught up. “He’ll get back whenever he gets back. I haven’t gotten any texts from him lately so I think he’s busy.” Go home. Go home to Sussex. Go home and stay there and I will ship Sherlock to you in a box. Possibly with all his parts still intact, Molly wanted to say. 

“You’re not hungry?” 

“I ate at six before I got off work.” Please go away. I’m very tired. Why was she bothering to be polite? Why were they doing this dance? 

“Oh love, it’s nearly twelve. You need to get something into you. You’re like my Sherlock. Too thin. Mycroft’s getting the same way, you know. He always had a bit of flesh on his bones, and now he’s refusing to eat carbohydrates and who knows what else.” 

Mycroft. Maybe she could call him for an extraction. If he was so intent on defending his mother. “Well, he is an adult,” Molly muttered absently. 

The woman sitting across from her sighed. “Oh, I know. They both are. Still. It isn’t healthy. He lost all that weight rather quickly.” She shook her head. “Oh I know it’s none of my business. But they’re my boys. They don’t stop being your children once they’re adults. What about your family?” 

Molly looked away, hoping for some way to escape the question. “I don’t really have one. A cousin in Canada. That’s all.” Having a cousin in Canada was like having no cousin at all, really. It wasn’t like they spoke. 

“No parents? No siblings?” 

Molly shook her head no. “Just me. And Toby. And Sherlock.” She glanced over to the mantle. Toby was up on it, sitting on the skull. She had to admit, her phone was full of photos of the cat perched on top of it. 

“Not even siblings. Shame. That’s why we were so happy for Sherlock, you know. Mycroft needed someone. But by the time Sherlock came along, they were so far apart in age… well. They get along now, don’t they?” 

It depended on your definition of getting along. “I suppose.” 

“Oh they do. So much better than when they were children. Sherlock was a bit of a scrapper. He wasn’t afraid to take his brother on. I ended up pulling them apart more often than not. Seven years old and not afraid to try to take Mycroft’s face off.” 

That did make Molly smile, imaging a tiny Sherlock, trying to destroy his older brother. She wondered briefly what it would be like to have a sibling, and if it really was as awful as Sherlock made it out to be. “He wouldn’t be himself if he weren’t into trouble.” 

Speaking of trouble… the door opened and slammed, John talking indecipherably and angrily downstairs. 

“Oh there he is,” Sherlock’s mother said with delight as angry feet pounded on the stairs. 

Sherlock flung the door open, his coat tucked under his arm, and half of his face a mass of bruises. That got Molly’s heart racing, doing away temporarily with her lust for sleep. 

He glared at his mother. “Because this morning couldn’t get any worse,” he told her bluntly. 

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she said smartly, matching his loud, angry tone. “The least you could do is try not to actively get yourself killed.” 

Molly got up to look him over before he could respond to his mother. Now wasn’t the time to air a lifetime of frustrations. “What did you--no. I’ve got this.” If he were on her slab, She’d say fall on smooth cement, like a basement floor. Knowing Sherlock he had help. “Down a flight of steps,” she told him, squinting at his face. Reaching up, she poked his eyebrow, and he hissed. She moved on to the bruise on his cheek and jawbone, with the same results. “Probably just hairline fractures. You need x-rays to be sure there aren’t bits of bone floating around in there.” 

He pushed her hand away. “I know. I KNOW. But I’m not going to the hospital. Can’t you just x-ray me in autopsy?” 

Mrs. Holmes got up, a look of determination stiffening her features. “If you don’t behave yourself, I will send you to autopsy, but it’ll be a one way trip.” 

Molly had to bite her lips so she didn’t smile. 

“I’m fine, mother.” 

“Well, you won’t be if you don’t put that coat on and get in a cab with me so I can get you looked at properly.” she pushed him toward the door. 

Sherlock looked to Molly, pleading for some sort of intercession. Molly just shook her head. “Nope. You won’t listen to me. Maybe you will listen to her. And I’ve done two all-nighters in a row. You can go to get your head examined whilst I get a bit of of sleep.” She smiled and helped his mother push him out the door despite protests. 

“I can take my own x-rays in the morgue!” he called back behind him. 

“No you can’t, the equipment doesn’t work like that!” She said in a pleasant tone. “Have fun, ta!” Closing the door behind them, she leaned against it with a sigh. Maybe his mother wasn’t so bad after all? Obsessed with grandchildren, yes. Oppressive when she got something into her head, definitely. But right now that was working to Molly’s advantage.

Sherlock would never get looked over otherwise. She was too physically exhausted to explain in detail to someone who knew exactly what she was talking about that if he hadn’t turned his head when he fell, and he landed square in the middle of his face, he would be on her table, his septum pushed up into his brain. so he really ought to just get a few pictures taken to be sure it was just hairline fractures and listen to a medical professional for once in his life. 

Exhausted, she crawled into Sherlock’s side of the bed. It was totally irrational, of course. But it was the better side of the bed for naps. Flipping through a few messages on her phone, she slid it under her pillow when her eyelids grew heavy and Toby curled up on her side, like a sleep-accessory. It was too bad she’d gotten all the common sense. There were times when Sherlock could do with a dash here and there. 

##

“I have a plan.” 

Molly looked up from her knitting to Sherlock, who had just rushed into the flat. She didn’t like it when people had plans. “Go on.” 

“We’re going to take Billie for the weekend.” 

Molly narrowed her eyes. “You know, the last time someone had a plan, it was Mary. And I ended up moving in here permanently. So think really hard about your plan to take Billie for two whole days.” 

“Two and a half. No. Listen. We give John and Mary some time away, and--” 

“And John starts talking to you again?” she asked skeptically. 

It had been a week and a half, and John wasn’t budging. Sherlock’s bruises had resolved into a map of purple, yellow and green across his face. He hadn’t taken a case since Molly had laughed at the mess of bruises last week, and he was bored without anything to do or anyone to bother. 

“Well, I have to do SOMETHING.” 

Molly tucked the jumper she was making into the cushion of her oversized blue chair. “Sherlock, you hit John in the face multiple times with your erect penis. It may take him a while to recover.” 

“It was an accident.” 

“It doesn’t matter. Mary and I agree, you should just let it go for a while. He’ll eventually get over it.”

Sherlock threw himself into his chair, one leg going over the armrest. His looked up at the ceiling, completely unhappy with the situation. “Come on, it was a really clean penis. It smelled like tea tree oil and citrus.” 

“Did you ever think that’s the problem?” Molly scrunched her face. 

Sherlock turned his head in her direction, his eyes narrowed. “Wait, you’re supposed to fling dirty ones around?” 

Her whole face scrunched up. “How do I say this?” 

“Just say it. Neither of us are good at this.” 

“People really only have pristine genitals when they’re fairly certain there is going to be sex.” 

Sherlock looked around suspiciously. “People can’t just have really clean genitals.” 

“Not without an ulterior motive.” 

He squinted at her, slowly figuring something out. “You don’t actually smell like cinnamon.” 

Molly winced. “Let’s just pretend I do.” She had to confess to using a spice body lotion between her thighs sometimes when she thought things might go a certain way. Well, that secret was out. But it was amazing how many men had bought into it, including a certain know-it-all detective. 

Sherlock sat up, his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped in front of him. “No. I need to know more. Is this a frequent occurrence? How many people do this?” 

“Just let it go--” 

“For science.” 

Molly rubbed a hand over her face. She had opened an institutional sized can of worms. “People read signals, and know things are going a certain way, and maybe freshen up a bit. Or, they hope things will go a certain way. Or mean for things to go a certain way.” 

He stared blankly at her, absolutely no recognition in his eyes. 

She was used to the look by now. Error: Abort, Retry, Fail? 

Waving a hand in front of his face, he shook his head. “No--no. Wait. John thought it was a set up?” His eyes grew wide with horror. “He thinks I’m a pig.” 

“Possibly.” 

Before Molly could qualify the statement, Sherlock was flying down the steps, the door to the flat still open in his wake. She got up and closed it, wondering if they couldn’t just get a spring on both of them, so they shut themselves whenever Sherlock became dramatic and dashed about. 

##

Somehow they still ended up with Billie for the whole weekend. Two and a half days. Which was two days too many. 

Molly knew how this was going to go. Sherlock would get a case and she’d be stuck with the toddler the way she’d been stuck with his mother. Which she was still quite grumpy about, and told Sherlock so repeatedly. But right now Billie was sitting on her lap, stroking the skull, saying ‘nice kitty,’ over and over. And that was sweet, in its own morbid sort of way. 

Sherlock was looking up educational activities on the computer.

“Love, she’s two. Everything is educational for her. Including the park. We can get her on some swings and she’ll have the time of her life, and we can call it a day.” 

“It’s never too early--” 

“We’re not taking her on the Ripper tour. Just so we’re clear.” 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I’m not taking her on the Ripper tour. Mary was quite clear about which body parts I would lose.” He closed the laptop. “Zoo, child-oriented museums. I’ve made a list.” 

Oh god. He’d made a list. It was her first weekend off in ages, and he’d made a list. “Right. So. Where does one take a small child on a Friday night?” 

“Oh no. Tonight is educational game night.” He opened a desk drawer and pulled out four boxes.

Molly groaned. “You’re thinking about this too hard.” 

“John said I could do this if I put my mind to it. I’m putting my mind to it.” 

And that was a terrifying thought. 

##

Educational game night had been a true blessing and Molly’s only regret was that she didn’t pull her phone out till the end. Billie scattering game pieces and flash cards about, throwing the lungs from the anatomy plushy at Sherlock, and basically deciding she was Godzilla half way through Candyland was just amazing. What was even MORE amazing was Sherlock arguing with a two year old. For two hours. She had tears in her eyes from trying to hold back the laughter. 

Billie tried to kiss and talk to pictures of people she knew, not understanding they were representations. There was absolutely no way she was going to understand or care about the ugly anatomy plushy. She simply reached inside the thorax and started removing soft felt organs and throwing them around. 

Molly caught some and threw them back, knowing they were actually participating in educational play, even if it wasn’t as rigid as Sherlock would like. Sherlock ordered her not to encourage the child. So they started throwing the pieces at him. 

She only got the camera out to take video when Billie was beating him in the face with a set of lungs, screaming gleefully about Sher-sher being a dummy-head while Sherlock whined that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She made sure to send a copy to Mary before Sherlock could find it and delete it from her phone. 

When the girl finally played herself out, they got her ready for bed, and tucked her into the cot they’d brought up from the basement flat. Sherlock stared at the sleeping child, hands on his hips, and his lips pressed together in deep concentration. 

“She’s not a case you can solve,” Molly reminded. “She’s a small child. They’re chaos and spittle.” She gave a pat to a spot on the sofa next to her. “Now come here and sit down.” 

And he wasn’t listening. He was off in his thinking place. She grabbed the journal she had brought home with her. There was an interesting article about potassium overdose as a cause of death. She usually saw bodies with a lack of potassium, so she figured it would be worth a read. The table with the various parts per million needed to kill in different ways was probably something Sherlock should look at. If he’d not already done research into the area. Sometimes she wished he’d just focus and do something proper with all of those chemistry qualifications and settle down just a tiny bit. 

That wasn’t him, of course. But like beating him with a riding crop while she forced him to do housework, it was one of her fantasies. No waking up in the middle of the night. No getting ordered around her own lab by someone demanding test results when he knew damned well just how long they took to run. 

It would be nice. Maybe instead of standing over him in PVC and demanding he wash his dirty plates, she could stand over him and make him run his own labs. She could beat him about the ear with the end of the riding crop every time he complained about it. 

Curling up on her side, she folded the journal’s pages back, looking from the graphs to Sherlock. A bit of correction wouldn’t hurt someone with an ego as large as Sherlock Holmes’. In fact, he might like it. 

She knew nothing about that sort of thing, really. A few bits and bobs she’d picked up watching or listening to other people in university who liked to ‘play’ in the bedroom, or who were part of an S&M scene. She’d have no idea how to get into the PVC, should it come across her way (though she heard powder helped) much less how all those things worked. She just liked to fantasize a bit here and there. Nothing wrong with that, she supposed. 

Still. Watching him clean the kitchen while he wore a French maid costume would be oddly fulfilling. 

So would a weekend of uninterrupted sleep, but neither were likely to happen at this point. 

##

It was nearly ten when Molly woke. She rubbed a hand over her face and rolled over to an empty bed. Sherlock had let her sleep. This was...unusual. Possibly frightening. 

Throwing on her fluffy Hello Kitty dressing gown, she cracked the door open and looked out into the flat, trying to assess the damage. There were four pans on the stovetop. Six used plates on the table, and measuring cups all over the floor. Obviously at some point Sherlock had decided to make breakfast. She just hoped he wasn’t mixing it with science again. No one needed that. Molly just decided to steel herself for whatever she found.

Billie was laughing somewhere else in the flat, telling her Sher-Sher he was funny. 

But other than the kitchen mess, and newspapers spread around the sitting room floor with crayon drawings covering them, everything seemed ok. Sherlock was lying on the sofa, Billie at his head, playing with his hair. The velcro bows were adorable. “Thanks for letting me sleep,” she said, pulling one of the newspapers off of her chair so she could sit. 

Sherlock glanced over at her but didn’t move, since Billie had handfuls of his hair tight in her grasp. “Oh. I forgot about you.” 

Molly sighed. “Well, thanks for forgetting about me for a few hours, then.” 

“OH. I thought you’d be mad.” 

“Sarcasm,” she reminded him. 

“This little demon has been up since quarter to six. We’ve had breakfast. Then the breakfast that apparently comes after breakfast, we’ve colored, she’s thrown felt body parts at me, and now she’s torturing my hair.” 

Billie laughed and patted his forehead. “Sher-sher, making pretty!” 

Molly laughed. “Well, she does have you there. You aren’t as pretty as you could be.” 

“I looked fabulous in that dress.” 

“You looked like a frat boy in that dress till Mary fixed you up. And always remember: the makeup makes the man.” She wrinkled her nose. “At least that was one of your more interesting cases lately.” 

“Are you calling the case with the Vicar--” 

“We don’t talk about the case with the vicar.” She pulled out her knitting magazine. She would have done tea and breakfast but she was scared to go in the kitchen just yet. 

Sherlock dropped it. She was glad. Things had gotten so confusing in 221 that even Mrs. Hudson was asking what was going on between Sherlock and John, then proceeded to tell Molly that she’d better watch out, it sounded like a lover’s tiff to her. Molly thanked the woman for her advice and closed the door in her face. Which was the rudest thing she’d done in recent memory, even including walking out on Sherlock’s mum. But she hadn’t been able to take it any more. Nor did she want to explain that the ‘lover’s tiff’ was about Sherlock’s penis in John’s face. That wouldn’t help the situation whereby Mrs. Hudson seemed to think she was the only one who knew that Sherlock and John were ‘still getting up to the business’ that they’d so obviously been at before Sherlock’s demise.

“Looooook!” Billie squealed, showing off her completed work. Sherlock had four velcro bows in his hair, and small child lip gloss spread across his forehead. Sherlock had already complained about the gender conformity of buying her makeup and dressup play sets. So Mary bought Billie a carpenter’s set that made real carpentry sounds when used. It only took three days for Sherlock to slip down into the basement flat while everyone was sleeping and disable the electronics in the saw and the hammer. The next day, instead of being angry Sherlock had been in the flat in the middle of the night, Mary had smirked and asked if he had any other complains about John or her and their parenting style. 

Sherlock had appeared to accept defeat well. For about thirty-six hours until he arrived with a chemistry playset, completely with microscope that revealed different “slides” if you looked into the eyepiece and clicked the small button on the side. 

“She really does adore you, you know.” She wasn’t sure if Sherlock could tell. 

“It’s because I am the single most fascinating person in this building. The hellspawn simply has good taste.” 

Molly giggled at his rampant ego. “Yes, but you are still less fascinating than that cartoon with the mouse and the talking cheese.” 

“I need to look into that.” 

“Why, because she adores a show aimed towards toddlers, more than you?” 

“It’s mesmerizing qualities. Last week John was watching it and she wasn’t even in the room.” 

“He was probably just tired.” She rolled her eyes and went back to her magazine, intent on making Billie a little knit poncho for cool days. 

##

“Again!” Billie shouted, clapping.

Sherlock started pushing her again on the swing, with a fake smile frozen on his face. “We have been doing this for an hour,” he muttered to Molly between clenched teeth.”

“You asked if she wanted to go on the swing,” Molly said cheerfully. “It could be worse, you could be climbing to the top of the slide with her, still. I’m surprised you can’t appreciate her single-mindedness.” Sherlock could work on projects for hours or days without stopping. Molly accepted it as just something he did. And it meant she had the bed to herself once in a while. 

“I appreciate single-mindedness that doesn’t involve me pushing her endlessly while she laughs endlessly. This may be what purgatory is like, Molly. Purgatory is pushing a tiny blonde hellspawn on a swing for an hour and seven minutes. And thirty-two seconds.” 

Molly gave him a slightly sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “You were the one who offered to take her for the weekend in an effort to kiss and make up with John.” 

“Don’t say kiss.” His face shriveled up into something ugly. 

“Mary thinks you two just need to have sex already.” It was out of her mouth before she even thought better. She bit her lips together and looked away. Molly hated it when she just said what was on her mind. It always came out like that--sudden, and unfiltered.

Sherlock stared at her, not paying attention to the swing. The plastic baby seat hit him full on in the arm, practically breaking it off. “MARY thinks--no. Just… no.”

Molly bit her lips even harder as she caught the now-out of control swing while Billie laughed. 

“John and I--no. NO. And MARY is saying? No. Nope.” 

“I’m just repeating what she said.” 

“Maybe it was sarcasm.” But he didn’t look like he believed that. 

“I get sarcasm, Sherlock.” Most of the time. It was just about every other interpersonal signal that she was hopeless with. Unless he was in detective mode, sarcasm was dead to Sherlock. She had been designated the sarcasm detector in their relationship. “I ignore the sexual tension between you two because YOU ignore the sexual tension between you two, and so does he, but Mary thinks the house is going to implode one day if you two don’t work out your issues.” 

Molly could agree with that--they needed to stop ignoring it and actually talk about it, or something. Even if they never actually “did” anything about it. “I think you two need to at least acknowledge that it’s there.” 

“There is no sexual tension between me and John.” 

“Maybe it’s like sarcasm--you don’t see it when you’re not looking.” 

He frowned, obviously refusing to believe what she was telling him. 

Mopping a hand over face, she shook her head. “I love you, you know that, right?” She picked the baby up out of the swing. 

“Of course.” 

“And when I tell you something from the heart, I always mean it. Right?” 

Sherlock looked around suspiciously. “...Yes?” 

“I am telling you this from the depths of my heart, and I mean it just as much as I have ever meant anything: you and John have so much sexual tension between you I can’t believe I haven’t walked in on something hinky by now.” 

“But I’m with you,” Sherlock said dully. 

“You got an erection and slapped him in the face with it. Twice.” Molly pleaded for reason.

“There was a--”

“Breeze. I know.” 

He grabbed the chain on the swing to stop it from shaking. “But I love YOU.” 

“And you hit your best friend in the face with your penis.” 

“Can’t we all just make some sort of solemn blood pact that we never discuss that situation ever, ever again? I admit it wasn’t my greatest plan. It was just all I could come up with in a hurry.”

Molly shook her head and walked away from him, over to the nearest bench. She bounced Billie so she would be a little less upset about being out of the swing, then sat down. “Your Uncle Sherlock is an idiot. We aren’t talking to him right now.” Because if she had to talk to him about this any more, she would scream, twist his ear, and possibly pull his stupid perfect hair out. 

She pulled a bag of Cheerios out of her pocket and began handing them to Billie one at a time. Sherlock started walking their way, but she glared at him, and he stopped, looking for another bench. Sherlock was being a stupid stupid man again and she just couldn’t deal with it. “You’re named after him, you know. I don’t know why your parents would name you after someone so… stupid. But there you go. You are going to grow up to be much, much smarter than him.” 

Billie took hold of the bag and started feeding herself. “Smart. Sher-Sher. Stupid.” 

Molly laughed. “Exactly.” Kissing the girl’s head, she relaxed into the park bench. This was nice, just holding a child. Who didn’t like a bit of a cuddle with a soft, squirmy child? It raised oxytocin levels and gave a general sense of warmth and well-being to the body. Who wouldn’t like that? 

It didn’t mean she was going to go off making one to have her own inducer of cuddling highs. Too bad Sherlock’s mother was just as oblivious as he was about some things. “Maybe we need a holiday from the Holmes family? We’ll hide on a deserted island where no black cars can pull up next to us, and where silly detectives can’t find us, and silly detectives’ mothers can’t tell us what to do. Just for a few days,” she promised Billie. “A little sand, a little sun… we’ll be much better off.” She looked up. It wasn’t bad weather, necessarily. Just a bit gloomy. No forecast of rain. A bit of sun and warmth wouldn’t be bad at the moment, though. 

Billie finished her cereal, and Molly gave her some juice to wash it down with. Between the two of them they’d stuffed everything they’d need in their pockets, so they wouldn’t have to carry around one of those baby bags. Both had looked at the brown and pink patterned one they’d been left with and had made a face, then had started emptying it without saying a word. 

Unfortunately, that meant the two extra nappies were in Sherlock’s breast coat pocket. She’d be forced to tolerate him in a few minutes because what went into a small child had to come out. Quickly. 

She didn’t notice him walk up behind her, and she almost jumped out of her skin when he spoke. “You need me, don’t you?” 

“Sherlock, we’re together. We don’t need to have that discussion again. We’re together whether you love John or not. We’re together even though your mother is completely insane over babies. And we love each other, and we care about each other, and take care of each other, and that’s not going to change just because you and John are ignoring an obvious prob--”

He held out a clean nappy for Molly.

She snatched it out of his hand. “How long were you going to let me go on like that?” 

“Till you stopped saying nice things.” 

“Saying your mother is insane is a nice thing?” 

“Have you met my mother? Insane is putting it mildly. I don’t know what word is more intense than insane, but that’s what she is.” He walked around the bench and sat down, handing her a small blanket he’d stashed in his pocket, then some bottom wipes. 

Molly changed the baby quickly. It wasn’t cold unless the wind blew, but she was sure Billie didn’t want it on her bottom. As she was pulling up the baby’s purple corduroys, she handed the dirty nappy to Sherlock, who made no move to take it. “You know the rule, the changer is not also the nappy disposer.”

“And who made that rule? YOU did.” 

Molly scowled at him. “I will twist both of your ears at the same time, William Sherlock Scott Holmes,” she said sternly. 

He looked around them. “Shhhh.” 

“Oh you don’t want the world to know that you go by the most ridiculous of your names,” she said knowingly. 

“I had to keep up with Mycroft. All three of his are ridiculous.” 

“Take the dirty nappy to the that bin over there, or I will post it on my blog with a picture of you sleeping with Toby.” 

He glared at her like she was crazy, but marched off toward the bin.

Sitting the baby back on her lap, she bounced her leg a little. “Yup. He’s ridiculous. I don’t know why anyone puts up with him.” 

“He’s silly,” Billie announced. “Sher-Sher. Silly.” 

“Very silly. What’s he--oh.” Sherlock was looking at his phone. “He is going to come over here and tell me he has a case.” 

“I have a case,” he said a minute later, putting his phone back in his pocket.

“‘You’re not taking the baby.” 

“You can take the baby, then. They need you at the morgue.”


	4. Baby's First Crime Scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock brings Billie to a crime scene, then has to deal with his mother.

4.

Mary could feel it--every blood vessel in her body constricted, she was just moments from coming. John thrust in and up, hitting her head off the headboard, but she didn’t care because she was just about--

His phone beeped twice. A text. From Sherlock. 

And John hesitated instead of thrusting into her hard enough to make her scream. 

And that was it, she lost it. That second of hesitation. 

He continued to thrust, but it was gone. “Might as well look at it now,” she grumbled. 

“He can wait.” 

“Nope. It’s over. I’m done.” 

John looked at the phone on the bed and breakfast’s nightstand. “I wasn’t done.” 

“Oh, you’re done,” she informed him. “If I’m done, you’re done.” 

His shoulders slumped and he rolled off her. “He isn’t even here and he’s ruining things.” Picking up the phone he looked at the message, then handed the phone to his wife. “Serial poisonings?” he asked hesitantly. 

“Might as well go.” 

“But you’re not happy about it.” 

“This was supposed to be our weekend,” she pleaded, running her hand along his chest. “To make up for assaulting you in the vicarage.” 

“So I’ll tell him we’re busy?” 

She hesitated. She wanted to tell Sherlock to go to hell. She wanted to murder him with her bare hands. She’d been less than a second away from coming. And with a two year old, who knew when the opportunity would present itself again? But he might get himself killed. But she wanted to kill him. Dilemmas. “Tell him to have Molly text if he really needs you.” 

“Molly?” 

“She can filter whether it is a real emergency or a Sherlock emergency.” 

John hit the reply button. “Ahh. Good point. I don’t need to take a train two hours to find out he needs me to hand him a pen.” Answering, he hit send, and tossed the phone back onto the bedside table. “So we’re done-done?” He asked in disappointment. 

“Done for the moment, yeah.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his nose. “Done-done? Nahh. Give it a bit. But I’m afraid you’re going to have to put your back into it next time.” 

“You know, you’re capable of being on top.” 

“But I’m on holiday,” she moaned. 

Closing his eyes, John buried his head into the overly soft pillow. “I worry about you sometimes.” 

She ran her hands through his hair. “Good. I worry about you ALL the time.” Snuggling up beside him, their sweaty skin turning cool very quickly, she kissed the back of his neck. “Don’t worry. We still have a day and a half to work on getting pregnant.”

“What?” His head snapped up and his eyes grew wide. 

She laughed too loudly. It echoed off the white walls of the bedroom. “Just kidding. You should have seen the look on your face.” 

“You’re all going give me a heart condition.”

She pulled the sheet over them. “Probably. But you like it.” 

“God help me, I do.” 

##

Lestrade wiped a hand over his face. He had put up with a lot from Sherlock over the years, but this was beyond the pale. Even after the vicarage shenanigans. “You can’t have a baby at a crime scene,” he said in exasperation. 

Sherlock gave a put-out eye-roll. “It’s not REALLY a crime scene. You’ve already removed the bodies.” 

Billie wiggled in the baby carrier under Sherlock’s coat. 

“Yeah, and there’s blood everywhere. John’s going to kill you. And if he doesn’t finish you off, I may do it myself.” 

Sherlock looked around. “Your people have already trampled all over the place.I won’t be long. And she can’t see anything.” 

“Sher-Sher!” Billie shouted under the coat. 

Donovan walked over, her, arms crossed across her chest. She took one look at Sherlock’s wiggling coat. “OH. My. God.” 

“Oh give it a rest. Ruptured stomachs, I am assuming. Thus the vomiting of the blood. The poisoning happened suddenly. I will need to see the files on the other deaths.” 

“There’s no common factor,” Lestrade pointed out. 

“That you can see.” He continued to look around the dining room, inspecting every knick knack, every piece of mail. “I need the photos from this scene as well.” He stuck his finger in a bit of dust behind the silver serving set. “Mm. Samples of the dust from around the room. Send the blood to Molly. Nobody else in the morgue. Molly.” 

Donovan looked like she wanted to say something smart, but she somehow couldn’t even form a proper insult. She just watched the toddler’s legs kick out from Sherlock’s coat. “I just--” She shook her head and walked away. 

Sherlock shrugged. “It was the bloody dining room or the morgue. I figured this was preferable.” 

Lestrade’s shoulders slumped. “Just… hurry up. Or something. Get her out of here before she is traumatized for life.” 

Walking around slowly, Sherlock took in as much as possible. Some of it filed away for analysis later when he had more time. “That isn’t stomach contents,” he said, looking at a smear low on the wall. “It contains no bile. Bodies had no exterior wounds?” 

“Not that we could tell.” 

“I’ll save you a week’s worth of lab work: that’s from the killer.” He grinned. “Send that to Molly too.” He turned, heading toward the door. “I’ll send you my bill in the mail!” he called behind him. 

Lestrade looked at the bloody smear, hands on his hips. “We don’t pay you!” he reminded the detective. 

Walking down the front steps of the row house, he pulled the coat away from Billie’s face. “That was fun, wasn’t it?” 

“For you I’m sure, Freak,” Sally said, glaring at him. Apparently it had taken her that long to think of a proper insult. “Baby’s first crime scene?” 

Sherlock’s cheek twitched. “Third or fourth. Ninth, tenth. Whatever. But we don’t tell John about that. It just upsets him.” Usually he’d bait her a bit more and they’d toss insults for a bit, but Billie was beginning to smell a bit ripe. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a dirty bottom to change.” With an evil smirk, he stalked off, his coat billowing behind him. 

##

Sherlock knew his mother was in the flat before he even opened the door. Her perfume lingered in the air. Along with the smell of obsessive craziness. 

Sighing, he unlocked the door. “I thought you were back in Sussex.” 

“Well, I came back.” 

“You’re not staying here.” He didn’t have the coping skills for that.

Billie kicked her legs out from under Sherlock’s coat. “Gran!” 

“Well, at least SOMEONE is happy to see me.” She got up from the sofa, and held out her hands to the small child. “Oh Billie did they leave you with mean and miserable Uncle Sherlock? Let grandmummy give you some love…” 

Sherlock scowled. “Reason for visit,” he demanded. 

“I didn’t get to see you the last time I was in town, other than that awful trip to A&E.” She kissed both of the baby’s cheeks, and her nose. 

“And I was fine with that.” 

“You weren’t here when I visited, and it made Molly angry.” 

Sherlock threw his coat over Molly’s chair. “I think you made Molly angry.” His mother did that to people. 

“Well, I think she’s still upset with you, she let me in when I rang the bell, and said she forgot something at the lab, then left. I don’t know how you two are ever going to settle down properly, if you’re never even home at the same time.” 

And by settle down properly, she meant marriage and children. “Not happening. I have a case to work on.” He opened some case files and spread them across the desk. Well, on top of the other things that were on the desk. And they might have crept onto Molly’s side. “If you’re going to hold the demon spawn and amuse her, you can stay. If not, leave. I’m busy.” 

“We’re going to have a proper talk.” 

Sherlock picked up the photo of the first victim, with all the burst blood vessels under his eyes, and the exploded capillaries around his irises. “How’s about this--you talk, I’ll ignore you, and do whatever it was I was going to do to begin with.” 

“As if that isn’t a repeat of your entire childhood.” 

“Mmm hmm,” Sherlock said, already tuning her out. The other victims at the first scene didn’t have as explosive of a reaction. It was heavy metal, the lab had already determined that. But there was something else. Or they wouldn’t need him.

“I think that you’re putting too much stress on your girlfriend. Now, Molly is a nice girl, and I think you’re leaving too much on her shoulders…” 

“Yum hm,” Sherlock responded automatically. 

“Now I know she’s your first--” 

Sherlock turned around and glared at her. “Mother--I think you need to leave.” 

“We were having a nice chat.” 

Sherlock tossed down the photos, lips pressed together. “I am not discussing past or present relationships with you.” Boundaries. “Go bother Mycroft. Apparently humans are too lowly for him to keep the company of.” Let his mother shrink Mycroft’s head for a while. 

Bouncing the baby on her lap, she glared at Sherlock. “I know you don’t listen to me. About anything. Neither of you do. Which is how you ended up in that prison.” 

OH god, how had she known about that? Mycroft wouldn’t have told her. 

“Don’t look at me like that, young man. I still know people who know other people.” 

“Yes, yes, and you single-handedly ended the cold war.” 

“No, I didn’t. I quit to have you and your brother. And this is the thanks I get.” 

Sherlock put his hands on his hips, shifting his weight uncomfortably. “What? No grandchildren? I’m supposed to reproduce out of gratitude for you and my father having sex in the neighbor’s car by the lake?” He might have read her journal in his youth. 

She scowled at him. “I will twist your ears, Sherlock Holmes.” Because he needed another ear-twister in his life. “Now, you listen to me. When are you going to do right by that girl?” 

Sherlock made a face. Marriage had never even come up. “Half past never, I think.” 

“You both need to settle down. Stop getting shot and tossed into prisons in countries where we have no diplomatic connections and--” 

Sherlock pinched his eyes shut. “Don’t you have some crocheting to do? Back in Sussex? Maybe the outside of the house needs another coat of paint.” It seemed to change colors slightly every two to three years. “I think you should go home, go back to your… crafts. Or whatever it is you do. And just let me run my own life.” 

She snorted. “Because that has worked so well thus far.” 

Sherlock groaned. “I’m still alive, aren’t I?” 

“Barely,” she muttered. “And you don’t need to make fun of my life now. I’m quite happy with it. Not everything has to be cloak and dagger. Just because you CAN analyse code doesn’t mean it’s any fun. And a spoiled bit of roses in the garden won’t cost any lives. So there. I had the life I wanted to have with your father and you can stop with the snide remarks now. Twenty years is really too long to put up with a thing.” 

“I need to run my own life,” he told her calmly. There’d been plenty of debates when he’d been a teenager if he’d ever be responsible enough to be left out ‘in the wild’ on his own. Hell--John and Mary still debated on whether he could be left to his own devices, which was how Molly came to be living in his flat. “I at least need to try. And that means things with Molly.” The baby question came up like some sort of bullet point on a staff meeting every six months or so, and they always said they’d bring it up again in six months. But he was fairly certain that was just their polite way of meaning ‘no, not ever’ without actually saying to it and committing to it. But formal union? That sounded like a level of commitment that they weren’t ready for, if it took them an hour to decide where to get takeaway from. “This includes me botching things to hell and back. If that’s what happens.” 

Which was still a very real possibility if he dumped his mother on Molly one more time. 

He picked up the files again, trying to concentrate on them. He hated having his attention split. “You know, dad doesn’t have a problem with the way I run things.” 

“Your father’s as flighty as a bird. He thinks you and your brother need to find your own path and all of that rubbish. I told him it’s not good for him to be alone at this stage in his life, and I’m telling you that if you are serious about Molly, you should make it officially serious. And if you’re not…” she shrugged. 

“What? If you love something, let it go? You know, we were just flatmates until she decided her bed was too far away after night shifts.” And then at some point it was too far away all the time, and Sherlock had just never said anything about her ‘crashing’ in his room. It had moved into Molly getting properly dressed for bed, and crawling in with him, and neither of them saying a word until their amazing pissing match when she moved her things in. They hadn’t even had a real start to a relationship. He just looked up, and one day they were there. “She’ll go if and when she wants to. I’m not getting rid of her. But I’m not tying her down either.” 

Trying to concentrate on the files again, with little success, he closed his eyes and tried to push out all of his mother’s nonsense, and Billie’s talking on and on about who knew what. He had a handful of dead people and no one was sure why or who. 

“Well, you never listen to me about anything.” 

He didn’t even turn to look at her. “Is this reverse psychology? Get me to NOT marry her and NOT have children by pressuring me into it? Billie calls you gran, isn’t that enough?” 

“Well, my own flesh and blood--” 

“Forget I said anything. We have our own issues to deal with, none of which I am going to get into with you.” His mother was flightier than a hummingbird, but couldn’t she just take his father’s attitude of letting things go that didn’t involve him? How had that even happened? Oh wait. That’d be his mother’s perpetual and constant over-investment in her children’s lives. 

Like trying to make them social by forcing them into situations with other children. That had worked horrifically. Normalizing Mycroft and himself had been a fruitless task on his mother’s part. And then there was his father. ‘Don’t worry dear, they’ll find their way.’ 

In short: his parents drove him nuts. His father with his country wisdom and his mother with her--well. Everything, really. 

“Well, if you feel that way about it…” 

“I do. There are no grandchildren in your future. There are no weddings in your future. Though we are contemplating getting another cat.” Mostly because Sherlock was feeling neglected by Toby lately. “And you don’t have a cat problem until you get up to five, so we’re well within the limits of not becoming crazy cat people.” He hoped. 

His mother sighed. “You’re happy like this?” 

“Yeah. I am.” Even if Molly thought that he and John had some kind of bizarre sexual tension thing going on. Or something. “It is what it is, mother.” 

She smiled tightly. “I suppose it is.” 

“Though I could do without you upsetting Molly with all of this, and giving her panic attacks.” Molly was a sensitive soul, he’d learned. She internalized every last bit of it, and it came back out in a racing heart and sense of panic, or as a bit of yelling. Sherlock, on the other hand, just pictured tossing his mother out of various windows. He had a particular one with flower pots two streets over that he fancied at the moment. 

“Well.” She huffed. Like the idea was completely new to her, that SHE was upsetting someone. Hadn’t it been obvious she’d been upsetting Molly this whole time? That SHE had been the cause? Sherlock was rubbish with social subtext if he wasn’t consciously focusing on it. His mother must have just been plain oblivious. 

“Yeah. Babies, marriage, and anything involving her job are off-limits. Talk about yarn. She has a lot of feelings about yarn.” None of which Sherlock understood. Weighted, texture, chemical treatment, not chemically treated… lamb’s wool, sheep’s wool… apparently you could spin yarn from cat fur which made him feel odd inside. He already had Toby’s hair on everything he owned. He didn’t need to actually wear a jumper made of it. “And pasta sauce. You can talk to her about pasta sauce.” Because he didn’t want to say anything but he liked his mother’s better. “That’s what you can talk about.” 

“Am I allowed to mention the weather?” she asked skeptically. 

Sherlock hoisted the file in front of his face, letting her know the conversation was over. “Only if she brings it up first.”


	5. The coldest of wars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock is missing, then found. Trouble in paradise as he convalesces.

Molly looked up at Sherlock from the bowl of stomach contents with wide eyes. “Where is Billie?” 

“Mrs. Hudson wasn’t in, so I left her watching cartoons. She’ll be fine.” 

“DO NOT joke like that.” Her lips pressed together in anger and he knew if she weren’t holding a bucket of bile and crayfish, he’d be in physical danger. 

He rolled his eyes. “She’s with my mother. Who is apparently visiting again.” He shivered and made a face. “Apparently we’re supposed to get married or something.” 

Molly’s face scrunched up and she rubbed her forehead with a gloved hand. “First she harps on children, THEN on marriage?”

“I think I sorted it. As much as things can be sorted with Mother. She sacrificed for us children, bla bla bla ungrateful, bla bla bla cold war. I wasn’t really paying attention to the exact words. I’ve heard it before. And I was looking at this.” He held out a photo to her. 

She sighed. “I have no idea what I’m looking at.” He should have known that by now. No one ever knew what he was seeing. 

“Right. So. Dead bee on the window sill.” 

“OK.” It meant nothing to her. She was a pathologist. Not a beekeeper. 

Sherlock looked down at the stomach contents. “What are the odds that our fellow had a shellfish allergy. Possibly one he didn’t know about. Or had suddenly developed?” 

She looked at the half-digested meal. “Well, anything’s possible. But why poison them with heavy metals and then finish them off with anaphylaxis?” It was overkill. 

“I don’t know yet. Nor do I know why throat swelling didn’t show up on the bodies. That might be your jurisdiction. Can a combination of heavy metals heighten an otherwise non-fatal allergy, and can it cause death without the usual allergic reaction symptoms?” 

“Somehow I don’t think I’m going to find a journal article on this.” She sighed. “And it’s not like I can experiment on humans.” 

Sherlock snapped his finger and pointed at her. Kind of the way he did with Toby when Toby was climbing up on something he shouldn’t. “That’s it. That’s exactly what it looks like--a science experiment. That’s why the metals are never the same. That’s why it’s administered quickly. We need to go through old files and see if there are similar cases where the heavy metal was administered over time, or not at all. Controls, you know.” 

Molly let out a tiny, pitiful moan. “I’m not going to be going to bed tonight, am I?” 

His lips twitched. “To bed, or to sleep?”

She shook a finger at him. “Don’t get cheeky with me, Sherlock Holmes. I know your full name and I have a blog and I am not afraid to use it.” 

He winked and turned around, heading for the double doors. “We can catch a few hours’ if you pull the old reports by midnight!” 

She made an obscene gesture toward his back as the doors swung closed behind him. This is why she was turning into a cranky, emotional witch who yelled at partners’ mothers. No sleep, a severe lack of days off, and a bed partner who only added to her workload. 

She wanted to pass the computer searching off to one of the clerks or attendants. Or hell, even call one of Lestrade’s people. But she knew that only someone with her experience would be able to pull the right files. And Melvin was older than god and hated computers. So that left the only other pathologist here: her. Delegation wasn’t exactly her strong suit, so it was probably for the best. 

Sighing, she did the paperwork to transfer the samples to the lab and finished up with her poisoned corpse before heading to the computers. 

Sherlock had better at least say thank you this time. 

##

Not really reading the menu, John kept staring over the top of it at his wife. John had to smile a bit, looking at Mary. She always did look nice with her hair pinned up like that, wearing a dress that was off her shoulders. 

“Oh just order something,” she teased. “I’ll be here to look at all night after you pick something.” 

“The menu is entirely in French.” 

Her nose scrunched. “You picked this place, you know. Come on. Where’s your sense of adventure. Just point at something and go with it.” 

“Nothing could possibly go wrong,” he said sardonically. 

“You willingly run into fire after your boyfriend, but ordering something blindly from the menu is too terrifying.” 

“He’s not my--” His phone started ringing. 

Mary’s eyebrows arched, saying she told him so. She unfolded her napkin and placed it on her lap, just waiting for a smart response. 

John answered the phone--it was Molly’s ringtone. She had the sense to only call if it was important. He just hoped it was actually Molly and not Sherlock using her phone again. He hated that. 

“Molly?” 

“I might have, um… accidentally lost Sherlock?” 

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Where’s Billie?” That was the next logical question if Sherlock was on a case and Molly had ‘ misplaced’ him. 

“With his mum.” 

He groaned. “Maybe he ran away from his mother?” Grown men could run away from home, he supposed. 

“We were working on the poisonings and I was sure he’d be back at the lab by now, and he isn’t answering texts or his phone. Detective Inspector Lestrade hasn’t seen him either, since he left the hospital this evening.” 

“He’s probably just busy. And you know he doesn’t like answering the phone.” 

“He ALWAYS answers it for me. Even if it’s just to answer and immediately hang up.” It was their secret code for knowing he was OK. 

Mary sighed and reached across the small table, touching his wrist. “Just go, John. We were leaving tomorrow morning anyhow. I’ll pack us up and take the train after yours.” She smiled, trying to let him know it was ok. 

“Ok. Alright. Fine,” he said to both women at once. “I’ll be there as soon as possible. Make sure Lestrade’s people are keeping an eye out for him. And make sure his mother doesn’t corrupt my child?” 

“I’ll do my best. John… thanks. I’m worried.” 

##

John walked into the waiting room. Molly was the only one sitting there. “Well, he’s out of surgery,” John told Molly with a sigh. “He should be fine after everything heals.” 

Tears streamed down Molly’s cheeks, then she started giggling, completely unable to regulate her emotions. “I hate him,” she muttered. 

John gave her a hug. “He’s fine. If we’re lucky his stupid nose won’t have changed shape, and we won’t have to listen to him whine.” 

Another laugh escaped her as she hid her eyes on his shoulder. “And his stupid perfect cheekbones?” 

He kissed her head. “Probably fine. It was only broken on the one side. Jaw wired for about six weeks. That should come out alright. Wrists are just sprains, and his shoulders are about the same. Who falls down a chimney head first?” 

“I don’t know. I can’t even fathom--why--I’m going to kill him.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. he had smashed his face twice in less than a month. He was lucky to be alive, much less having broken bones throughout his face.

“I know. I should have come back with the first text.” 

Molly shook her head. “No one could have known. I still don’t understand--this was a poisoning--I don’t--ugh.” 

He rubbed her back. “It’s Sherlock. He’s got to do everything the hard way.” 

“And the poisoner is still out there.” 

“Give him a few weeks. He’ll be back on it.” 

Molly rubbed her forehead. She was exhausted. She’d been up all night working on the poisoning issue, and worrying about Sherlock, and keeping up with John searching for him… now she’d sat here until noon while they put his face back together. Face first. Down a chimney. “When will he wake up?” 

“I’ll stay here with him. Mary can take you home and get some rest. Likely, he’ll wake up for a few minutes, and it’ll be back to sleep. If you come back this evening, he ought to be awake and grumpy.” 

She nodded. She wanted to see him. She wanted to hug him and tell him he was stupid and she was angry with him for being so stupid. “Maybe I’ll just stay till he wakes up? Just to be sure he’s ok?” 

John shrugged. “If you want. But then home and to bed. Doctor’s orders.” 

##

John was right. Sherlock was out of it, and grumpy. He woke with bandages stuck to his face and forehead, his hair a mess of knots. His hands were wrapped to provide support, and to keep him from tearing out the IVs. 

Molly gently sat on the bed next to him. “Quit going face first into things,” she told him gently, tucking some of the tangled hair behind his ear. “You’ll ruin that beautiful smile.” She’d meant to yell at him, but suddenly she didn’t have the heart. 

Sherlock let out something between a moan and a growl. 

“Oh hush. Your pretty face will be fine. Shouldn’t even be any noticeable scarring. They got a dental surgeon to come do the stitches.” They were used to working in tiny spaces, which made the stitching barely noticeable. “Plastic surgeon says other than the bruising, you should be ok to get things back to normal in a few weeks. Which is good. I found other chemicals, beside the arsenic and other metals. I ran them through past suspicious deaths and got a few things. I gave it over to Lestrade for now until your cheekbones heal,” the last was said in a teasing tone. 

He was trying to scrunch his nose and make a look of disgust, she suspected, but it was too tight and swollen. “Look, you’re going to be fine. We’ll keep working on this, and I promise everyone will text you if anything interesting comes up.” She bit her lips, seeing the error in that sentence when he groaned again. “I mean, as soon as your new phone comes in. Should be here tomorrow.” 

He held up his bandage-wrapped hands. 

“I don’t know. I’m sure we’ll figure out something.” He’d die if he couldn’t type back to people. “But don’t hurt yourself more just because you want to tell us how wrong we are.” She sighed, twisting one of his knotted-up curls in her fingers. “Can’t you just behave? Just a little? I don’t worry. Mostly. But when you make me worry I really worry and then I take anti-anxiety medication. And then I have trouble staying up all night working on your stupid labs.” Her lips pressed together and her jaw trembled a little. “You’re stupid and… and… you’re stupid. And if your face weren’t broken, I’d break it again.” Her cheeks were wet. “I just think that you should--should--not try to get yourself killed. That isn’t too much to ask, is it? Just don’t get yourself killed? And--and you tell me to be reasonable, and you tell me--” 

He sighed. 

“No, no. You let me finish, Sherlock Holmes. William Sherlock Scott Holmes. You just sit there and--and--I’m not going to listen to you next time you tell me to be reasonable. And not to worry because it’s your job. I used to stitch you up before you met John. And you have only gotten a bit safer, and you’re only safer when he’s around. Which is lovely. That’s fine. You two SHOULD get married if he’s the only one you listen to. Cos--cos You’re stupid. And--and--maybe you should have sex with your best friend after all.” 

Mary turned Molly by her shoulders, and held her in a tight hug, whispering hushing noises into her hair. “It’s fine. He’s fine. It looks much worse than it is. You know that.” 

“It looks like he got his face smashed in.” 

“It’s just a broken jaw and a few fractures and sprained wrists. See, I knew you shouldn’t see him just out of recovery.” She looked over Molly’s shoulder at Sherlock. “You just think about what you’ve done. You’ve gone and made her cry.” She brushed Molly’s hair with her hand until the other woman’s chest stopped shaking. Mary pointed a finger at Sherlock. “And don’t think we’re done here, mister. My child is pooping purple from all the blueberries you let her have, you made Molly cry, I had to lie to your mother about you getting your face smashed so that she’d just go home to Sussex and leave us all the hell alone...and we have to have a long talk about you and John. There will be ground rules.” 

He glared at Mary and pressed the button on the morphine pump as hard as he possibly could, with all the slow drama he could muster. 

She kissed Molly’s cheek. “Love you haven’t slept in ages. We will get you home and fed properly and put to bed. Then you might feel differently about those two incorrigibles shagging.” 

##

After two sandwiches, a bowl of soup and a mug of warm milk, Mary put Molly to bed. She’d be quiet for a bit, then would complain about Sherlock, then she’d tear up a bit, and go back to being quiet. But Mary could see the exhaustion and worry driving every increasingly nonsensical word out of Molly’s mouth. 

Once Molly was asleep (face down on Sherlock’s pillow--how did she even breathe like that?) Mary tucked her in properly and kissed her head, the way she did Billie when they were putting her to bed. These things happened. Far more often to Sherlock than to the rest of the population. But she knew from her own past lifetime of adventures that they happened. And the broken jaw was really the worst of it. But being overwrought and exhausted, in addition to seeing him in all those bandages had just done Molly in. 

Lying next to Molly on the other side of the bed, she propped her head on her elbow and stroked Molly’s hair. Sherlock didn’t need to go frightening her like that. He could have called for John again. It was completely nonsensical that John should have to spend his life guessing whether texts from his best friend were real emergencies, or Sherlock emergencies. Of course, maybe even Sherlock didn’t know. 

Mary adored him. He was intelligent and quirky and a fiery ball of energy. He was funny. And whenever he was around John, John came on fire as well. It was kind of beautiful to see. He was also an egotistical dunce. Molly seemed to know the secret of why Sherlock had a massive brain and no sense. But it also seemed like she wasn’t sharing with anyone at all. Sometimes she just wanted to know for personal edification. Others so she could help him stay out of trouble. A grown man really shouldn’t need a whole team of people to save him from himself, and yet there they were. 

Resting her head on Molly’s pillow, she stared at the poor beleaguered woman. She put up with a lot. Far more than Mary put up with from John. She seemed to have patience when it was needed, and the ability to know when an ear or two needed to be twisted. It made Mary so glad she’d been right about Molly being good for Sherlock. It had been good for both of them, really. 

Closing her eyes, she sighed, folding her arms over her chest. It took one to know one, but she had no idea what exactly Molly and Sherlock were. Besides two peas in a pod sometimes. 

##

“I think she’s mad at me,” Sherlock mumbled as he learned to talk with a wired-shut jaw.

John sat in the ugly plastic chair next to Sherlock’s bed, rolling his eyes. “Well, you did frighten her half to death. Worse than when we almost died in that shipping container, and far worse than the first time you came home with your face smashed in.” 

“If I scared her, why’s she angry?” 

John’s shoulder slumped. He knew so much and understood so little. Apparently the penis in the face had all been some large misunderstanding, and he apologized for it being so clean. He knew he was going to have to explain this one slowly to the drugged-up detective. “Because you scared her. She is angry with you for scaring her.” 

“But I’m fine now. So she can stop being scared and angry?” 

He decided to be slightly scientific about it. “People don’t just shut off emotions once the danger has passed. It’s the same reason we laugh and make morbid jokes after a case. It’s over, but our emotions are still running high. Molly’s adrenal gland starts going all over again every time she sees you, sending her into fight-or-flight mode.” 

“Ohhhh. She’s having panic attacks. She does that.” 

John rubbed his eyes. “Yes. The adrenalin is making her have panic attacks and think repetitively about what COULD have happened. So when she comes in here to visit you at lunch time, spend a few minutes reassuring her that you didn’t mean to scare her, and that you will be more careful.” 

“Even if I’m not--” 

“ESPECIALLY if you’re not actually going to be more careful. And also reassure her you have absolutely no interest in having sex with me. I don’t care if that’s a lie as well. Just… think about her for a bit and what she needs. And that is reassurance. Then you can get back to being self-obsessed and having all of us tell you repeatedly what a poor thing you are for being on liquids for six weeks.” 

“CLEAR liquids,” he reiterated. 

“Not the whole time. Don’t be melodramatic.” 

He put a stack of medical journals on the rolling table next to Sherlock. “There’re a few interesting forensic related studies in there that you might like. If not, the paper on the herniated cornea has a few grotesque photos that you might enjoy.” He gave Sherlock a pat on the leg. “Don’t worry, we’ll spring you in a few days. You’re almost done here.” He just needed to be checked again by the plastic surgeon to be sure everything was healing, and for his doses of pain medication to be lowered. Then they could take him home and access to his whining would not require a commute across town. That would make everyone’s lives easier. 

## 

Sherlock frowned when Mary handed him the glass of orange juice. It was his first day off of clear liquids and she was making him take it slow. “I don’t need a babysitter.” He was on the sofa, three pillows behind his back and a blanket over his legs. His hands were still bandaged and butterfly tape all over his face so he looked as pathetic as he felt. 

“I’m not your babysitter, Sherlock. I’m a qualified nurse, and I’m looking after a friend while he’s convalescing. That’s all. Now there’s no pulp in that so it shouldn’t be a problem. If it is, let me know. And I mean it.” 

He sighed, knowing there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. “Molly--” 

“Molly has been looking after you since you got home. And working her normal shifts. She needs a break. She needs some proper sleep.” 

“She’d get it if she weren’t sleeping on the sofa every night.” 

Mary sat on the coffee table, leaning in toward him. “She’s probably afraid of jostling you in her sleep.” 

“She sleeps like the dead,” he said stiffly between sips. “And she’s not… talking to me. She talks to me. But not like before. AT me. She talks at me.” 

“I’m sure she’s just tired,” Mary soothed. “You’re a much harder patient than the ones she usually sees.” 

His lips pressed together. There was something he couldn’t quite find the words to say. While he thought it out, he finished the orange juice. He let her take the cup from him and he leaned back. Probably the best way to address it was head-long. “My deductions are seldom wrong.” 

Mary took the cup from him and put it on the coffee table next to her. “Yeah. Because you’re pretty smart for an idiot.So?” 

“She’s going to move out of the flat once I’m better.” 

She put her hand on his blanket-covered knee. “And how did we come by this deduction.” 

He looked around the flat, his neck turning stiffly. “She sleeps on the sofa. She’s… terse with me. Except when she’s outright angry and telling me how stupid I am. I don’t… understand.” 

Patting his knee, she nodded. “Yes. Admitting it is the first step. She’s not moving out. She’s taking care of you the whole time she is home.” 

“Angrily.” 

“She’s angry because you scared her.” 

“Hasn’t that gone away by now?” 

“Sherlock, if your face weren’t a mass of bruises, I would hit you.” She shook her head. “You two need to talk. This is not something I can explain or sort out for you.” Though Mary had desperately hoped she’d be able to. Most of the time Sherlock just needed someone to explain where he had gone horribly wrong with his failed human interaction, and everything would be set to right.

“What do I say, or ask her, or do?” He tossed his bandaged hands up in the air. “I’ll just make her leave faster.” 

“Is this your first real fight?” 

 

“We yell at each other all the time.” 

“You and JOHN yell at each other all the time. He’s still here. Hell, he moved back because you’re so damned irresistible.” 

“Molly isn’t John.” 

That made Mary laugh. “Oh, I know. Molly isn’t passive-aggressive in putting up with your shit the way John is.” 

“My shit?” he ground out through tired lips. 

“Yeah. Your shit. We love you, he will stick with you forever. I adore you to pieces. But you are full of shit. Possibly up to your eyeballs, if you can’t see what’s in front of you. This is your first REAL fight. Everyone has them.” 

He scowled. “Was your first fight with John the whole… assassin thing?” 

She smiled. He had an adorable little lisp on his S right now. “No. We had a four day knock-down, drag-out over a sofa.” 

“Four?” 

Rubbing his leg for a moment, she looked away, almost remembering the incident fondly. “It’s never JUST about the thing it’s about. We were looking at sofas, and he didn’t want to look at sofas. He wanted me to pick something, or, god forbid, order it online. He was insulted I disliked his charity shop sofa, because it was FUNCTIONAL, and why would I ever want to get rid of something FUNCTIONAL. I thought it was ugly, and it hurt my tailbone if I sat on the right hand side.” 

She shook her head. “I fell off a building and through the awning and… it’s not important. I broke my tailbone. It never healed right. The point is, I wanted something that matched the place, and he couldn’t stand getting rid of something that still worked, and we both took it personally, and the next thing I was bringing up how before we moved in together he’d never spend the night at my house, and he was mad that I had never said I wanted him to, and why were we getting a new sofa when we hadn’t gotten rid of any of my things, and look how they were taking over the flat.” She rolled her eyes. 

This knowledge did not seem to make Sherlock any happier. 

“I was about ready to pack my things before we sorted it.” She shrugged. “We needed to both put our egos aside and have a conversation. Which is what you need to do with Molly. Quit being Sherlock Holmes, most self important man on the planet, and be her partner.” 

His lips twitched back and forth. “Molly doesn’t have an ego.” 

“Bless your heart, you believe that. You probably believe she doesn’t fart, either.” She looked at the ceiling, trying to remember an old feeling. “Oh to be young and in love again.” 

“Of course she does. Everybody--oh wait.” 

“Yes.” She slid her hands under his and held them gently. “Just talk. Be honest. With yourself, and with her. And everything will sort itself out. And if not, we’ll help YOU move out. Because, really, Molly’s the better neighbor.” 

“Where would I--” 

She kissed his lips, about the only part of his face that wasn’t bruised. “Hush. I was teasing. We’re not going to let either of you get away.”


	6. The unsuspecting detective

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and Molly have a chat. Apparently they didn't know they were fighting. She orders him to make up with John.

6.

Mary had left him to his own devices for the last half hour, before Molly came home. He found a comfortable way to recline a bit and closed his eyes, and was dozing when Molly walked through the door. She quietly put her bag on her chair, and went into the bedroom, changing out of her work clothes into her pajamas. She did that now days. Her shifts were too long. 

“I’m supposed to talk to you,” he said quietly after she’d put on the kettle. “We have to talk.”

She came into the sitting room tentatively, re-braiding her hair and tying it off again. “We do?” 

“Something’s wrong, and apparently we’re fighting. But I didn’t know that.” 

She sat in her chair and turned to face him. The distance was daunting. People did not sit that far away when they were feeling particularly intimate. “We’re fighting?” Apparently it was news to her too. 

“Mary said so.” 

“Oh.” 

It was quiet. 

“So. We’re fighting,” Sherlock reiterated. “You are being… terse and short and say I am wrong about everything.” Marriage counseling had really helped him put names to some things. So maybe that failed and horrible case that had started his strife with John had been good for something in his life. “And you keep saying I’m stupid. But I don’t know how to fix stupid.” You couldn’t fix stupid, really. He’d been trying with Anderson for years. 

Biting her lips, Molly took a moment to turn the chair to face him completely, then sat back down, her elbows on her knees and hands clasped in front of her. “I’m just so… MAD at you.” 

“I’ve guessed that much,” he shot smartly. “No, wait. I said that wrong. I mean, I know you’re mad. And I know you’re mad I got hurt. But I can’t go back and time and make me unhurt.” He sighed. Talking made him so tired right now. It also made his jaw extremely uncomfortable, despite the painkillers. He bet without them, it would be far, far worse. 

“I’m not mad you got hurt.” Her lips moved back and forth, making her nose twitch like on Bewitched. Sherlock wondered if she knew she did that. “I am mad you got hurt. You should have called John.” 

“I did call John.” 

“You know, we triage your texts. We try to determine if it’s a real emergency, or a Sherlock emergency.”

“What does THAT mean?”

“A real emergency is being chased across a rooftop by a serial poisoner with a dart gun,” she explained smartly. “A Sherlock emergency is when you need someone to come home and find the scissors that you misplaced last week because you are too busy thinking to dig through drawers and the freezer.” 

“I only left my keys in there once--” 

“And the remote control. And evidence. And the book I was reading.” Her shoulders slumped. “You are too hard to keep up with around here. You get on something, and everything else goes away, and we find out you haven’t eaten in four day and that you’ve left an open jar of jam on your computer. I can’t handle it. It’s exhausting.” 

She was leaving. He didn’t know why Mary had insisted otherwise. 

“This is me.” 

“You need to be a… little less YOU sometimes.” She closed her eyes, pushing errant strands of hair off of her forehead. 

If his jaw were capable of movement, he would be grinding his teeth together. “So I’m just… too me, and that’s just too much. I’m sure Mycroft can find you accomodations quickly, if I’m too much of a burden.”

Molly threw herself backward on the chair, into the squishy, comforting embrace of the cushions. “Is that what you want?” 

“It sounds like that’s what you want. It’s felt like that for ages.” 

She closed her eyes, leaning her head back into the cushions. “I want to hit you sometimes.” 

“You’ve hit me before,” he pointed out.

“I slapped you. That’s different. And you were as high as a kite. I doubt you even felt it.” Her eyes were still closed, her head lolling back and forth on the head cushion. “I mean, I want to… beat some sense into. I want to shake you by the shoulders. Or yell directly at your brain. Just take it out of your skull, and yell at it.” 

He clenched one eye shut, trying to decipher what she was saying. “That’s… kind of murder.” More than just ‘kind of.’ It was a bit hard to live without one’s brain. “Maybe you can yell at a kidney or something? You only need one of those.” 

“You don’t understand what I”m saying.” 

“Do you understand what you are saying?” 

“Nope. No idea.” 

“Do we need a marriage counselor?” He felt like they needed some sort of interpreter between them. 

“We… aren’t married.” 

“You know what I mean--you go in and you say what you want and then they make sense of what you really mean, and that’s how I found out that John thinks I’m a stuck-up self-centered arse who avoids inter-personal conflict with sarcasm, deflection and generally avoiding concepts that are foreign to me. Like actually resolving arguments instead of avoiding them or moving to London because Mother was annoyed with my smoking.” 

Her head fell into one of her hands and she chuckled bitter. “Your mother. Your MOTHER.” 

“That’s pretty much how I refer to her too,” he said as a show of solidarity. “She’s… TOO MUCH. It’s like being forced to eat a seven-layer chocolate cake. In its entirety.” 

“Or having needles thrown at you constantly.” 

“Yeahhh. That is what it’s like, isn’t it? She just gets an idea in her head and steam rollers ahead, everyone else crushed into submission in her wake. Christmas a few years ago was a special kind of hell. We never have Christmas any more after the year I baked Exlax into Mycroft’s tart and he lost control of certain bodily functions at the table. But apparently when you get shot, mummy insists everyone gets together for dinner. Drugging everyone was probably the best possible outcome for the situation.” 

Molly had slumped in her chair a bit. “Your mother is a problem.” 

“The marriage counseling lady said said that when you’re in a relationship with someone you’re de facto in a relationship with their family.” 

Molly laughed bitterly. “Not MY family.” 

“But it seems like we are both stuck with my mother. I’ve been stuck with her my whole life. Decades upon decades of… THAT. You know, she put me in playgroup when I was four, because she felt I needed to be socialized. As if I were a dog.” So, mother was a problem. Shocking. Mummy couldn’t just annoy Sherlock and Mycroft, she had to adopt Mary and John and Billie, and she had to get involved in all of their affairs. 

“I don’t want to be stuck with your mother. It’s always the same things with her.” 

“I told her to stuff it, before all this happened.” Oh god, his mouth was getting tired. “I think she might finally take the hint.” 

Molly drew a deep breath in her nose, and let it out slowly between her lips. “Ok. That’s good. But… I’ll believe it when I see it?” 

Sherlock nodded slowly. “Yeah. She’s come over from Sussex more in the last six months than in the previous five years. I’m not happy about it either.” He was thoughtful about it. “Unless we remove my mother from the equation. Which is entirely possible. We have the technology.” 

It at least made Molly laugh. “You’re obsessed with defenestration.” 

“A bit. I didn’t have proper toys as a child.” 

“If my mum were still here…” 

Sherlock didn’t know what to say for that. “I’m...sorry?” That seemed like a thing people say. 

“I’d be different with her. It would be… nice. And not this… this butting heads. We’re goats around here.” 

He had no idea what goats had to do with it. “Maybe. My family… is… weird. My father is an aging hippy, my brother is, well, Mycroft. And mummy is a fruitcake. Your milage may vary.” 

“Yeah. It might be like that. Or it might be worse. I was young. Maybe we’d have eventually ended up like you and your mum. But in my mind…” she smiled at the memory, staring up at the ceiling. “She was perfect.” 

“I lost all illusions of my parents’ perfection the day mummy told me and Mycroft that if London was hit by Russian nukes we wouldn’t have anything to worry about because the radioactive drift would give us cancer and we’d all be dead shortly. I was five and preparing for nuclear winter.” 

Molly laughed, covering her eyes with her hand. “She’s mad.” 

“Now you know where I get it from.” 

“Sweet baby Jesus.” 

“What’s he got to do with it?” 

“It was just a thing to say. Let’s just pretend she’s going to stay in Sussex forever. And no more driving me crazy with the baby stuff. And the marriage stuff. I’m still angry at you for not telling John, or me, or Greg that it was a real actual problem that you needed backup for.” 

“I couldn’t exactly text when I was getting chased. I’m good at blind texting, but not that good.” 

“Can we--can we come up with a system, or something? Where we can tell it’s a real problem or you just want one of us around? I mean--you are--you always act like you’re an island.” 

John may have said something similar a few times. “But I’m needy. That’s what you’re saying.” 

“You’re a lot of work.” 

There it was. He was too much work to be around. “I see,” he said tightly. He tried to let the muscles in his jaw relax, but even making a conscious effort didn’t help. 

“I didn’t mean it like that.” She shifted in the chair. “I mean--I don’t know what I mean. I’m staying here. I’m staying with you. But… I’m tired. I’m so tired. Work is doing me in. We’re still working on the heavy metals case. And I know you need help right now. And you need help… other times too. But lately, you’re not helping either.” 

“With myself.” 

“With you. With me. I have my own trouble keeping on track and on top of things. And its a hundred times harder when you’re leaving things places and the police are coming looking for files. And when I have to wash all the clothes. Sometimes… if you just put the clothes in the dryer, that would help. So much.” 

She was right. They used to be so much more organized when it came to chores. They had lists, they had dates and deadlines, and things had gotten done. It was actually the first time in Sherlock’s life he’d managed to keep track of the house. “We used to be better about it.” 

“Yeah. We’re just… so busy. I’m out of knickers after today. The stuff in the washer’s been there since Tuesday. It needs to be redone. That’s not your fault. THIS time. You get a pass on chores for a while. But all the other times I’ve had to rewash clothes… All the times I get home late, and have to make dinner because you just won’t eat the whole day because you’d rather starve to death than make food for yourself… I feel like the servant.” 

“You’re not the--” 

She wiped a hand over her face. “Let me finish. We haven’t been working together in ages. And I’m burnt out.” 

The silence seeped in again. “You need time off work.” 

“So I can do more around the flat? You’re the one who drags me into the lab at all hours to do things just for you. Everything in my life revolves around you. And that’s exhausting too. YOU are exhausting.” 

“Cos I’m so difficult to be around.” The truth at last.

“Because you are a tornado. You just whip through here. Your brain works a hundred times faster than the rest of us, and you’re onto the next thing and the next thing, and we’re all rushing to keep up. You’re brilliant. You know that. but sometimes… I need you to slow down. For me.” 

Sherlock didn’t know what to say to that. So he nodded. 

“I don’t know if you can. But… maybe try?” 

He nodded again. “I don’t know if I can.” He’d been running this fast since he was a child. Sometimes, nothing seemed to slow him down. The anti-anxiety medications helped. A little. Not as much as morphine used to. 

“You are a good person, Sherlock. I just can’t keep up.” 

“So… slow down.” 

The tiniest smile spread across her lips. “Yeah. No running near the pool. We’ll find a way.” 

He squinted with suspicion. “Is this going to involve another therapist?” 

“Only if you want it to, I guess.” 

“I’d rather it not.” 

“You know I’m proud of you. Going through all that. And it helped. We figured ourselves out.” 

“Yeah. And now I’m saddled with a handful of diagnoses that I’d rather not have.” 

Molly tucked her knees up to her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs. “They don’t mean anything. You’re still the same person you were before. Giving a name to the problems just means they’re now Googleable. And having names… well. I see myself in a lot of those things. So you’re not alone. We can be stupid and awkward and lose things and be rubbish with people together, I guess. Maybe that’s why we work.” 

“We work?” 

“Yeah, we still work. Even when I want to kill you sometimes.” 

“And even when you’re never home.” 

“Oh?” Molly’s eyebrows arched in surprise. 

He shrugged. “I miss you, you know.” He thought she did. Maybe he hadn’t made it apparent. 

“That’s good to know.” 

Apparently not. “Yeah. I hate when you work the overnights.” 

“That’s possibly the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.” 

“I don’t know what to do when someone isn’t stealing the blankets all night.” 

She scowled at him. “Don’t ruin a perfectly good moment with sarcasm.”

“All of those… romantic things. They make me uncomfortable.” While they were poisoning the air in the flat with so much honesty. 

Putting her feet on the carpet, she finally got up and crossed the room and sat on the floor next to him, sliding her hands through his hair. “I know. And I don’t ask for it. We’re fine. That’s fine. Just… don’t ruin a moment. Once in a while. But not having all those… relationship signposts. I like it, you know. In its own way. More than I thought I would. I thought I’d just have to accept we didn’t do that. But it’s ok. Not worrying about those things. It was always hard to keep up with. All those things you’re SUPPOSED to do in relationships. Flowers. Dates. Those things.” 

“You don’t find my lack of… romantic overtures disappointing?” 

She thought about it, gathering her words. Her hand paused on his forehead, fingers still full of his hair. “I think we’re comfortable enough without. That’s the better part. We are past that, maybe? What I’m saying is… it’s fine, the way it is. We’re fine the way we are. Well, except for the things that aren’t fine.” 

He couldn’t argue with that. He’d spent a lot of time being afraid he wasn’t doing all those things her past boyfriends had, and that it would affect them in the long term. It never dawned on him that she was ok with it. “Oh. Alright.” 

“Well, then. What’re you annoyed with me about?” 

“I was just… worried. More than annoyed. No. I was annoyed that you were mad.” 

She nodded, dragging her fingers through his hair slowly. “I should have said something sooner.” 

He relaxed into her touch, finally, feeling better about their situation. “Talking about these things isn’t really our… thing, is it?”

“Nope. Neither of us.” 

##

 

Sherlock’s idea of getting ready for bed at the moment was taking his dressing gown off, tossing it on the floor and crawling into bed. he’d been in his pajamas all day.

“You know, you can still brush your teeth,” Molly told Sherlock as she brushed her hair. 

“No I can’t,” he grumbled, trying to find a comfortable way to lie down. Eventually he ended up usurping Molly’s extra pillow while she wasn’t looking. “Hurts.” 

“Well, I am not kissing that mouth come morning then. Just be gentle about it. Or at least use some mouthwash. 

He scrunched up his face and closed his eyes. “My teeth are fine.” 

“It is not your teeth I worry about. The rest of your mouth smells like a zoo in the mornings lately.” Pulling her hair back into a loose ponytail, she left him to go to the bathroom to brush her own teeth. 

The idea of anything that wasn’t liquid touching his face right now was a little more than he could handle. He was grateful his teeth were fine, that everything in his brow and cheeks were microfractures that would heal, and that his nose would go right back to the way it was, or so the surgeon insisted. But his teeth hurt. Granted, his jaw hurt. A lot. A lot more than other broken bones. But his teeth always felt… rattled lately. 

Did he want a kiss in the morning? 

Why was this a difficult question? 

Groaning, he rolled out of bed, and followed her into the bathroom. “I am brushing my teeth for you.” 

“Yes. It’s how I know you love me. You don’t want to give me nightmares about the lion section of the zoo. Again” 

He made a face and took the toothpaste from her. Yes, he could do the fronts, he supposed. A little mouthwash. He couldn’t speak for the backs. They were probably hideous with bacteria by now. Ever so slowly and gently he brushed, trying to be thorough without jostling his jaw or his teeth. She smiled at his effort then rubbed his arm, leaving the bathroom for bed. 

The mouthwash stung, but he kept it in his mouth for the required length of time, then spit it out. Fine, he wanted a kiss in the morning. 

Crawling back into bed, he saw the elusive third pillow was still on his side of the bed. She did take care of him. There was no doubting that. She waited until he was settled, then put an arm around him gently. His bandaged hand rested on top of hers, closing his eyes. “Well, glad that’s sorted. I don’t like fighting. Especially when I don’t know we’re fighting.” 

She yawned. “Yeah. I know. Now you just have to fix it with John.” 

HIs eyelids snapped open. “I thought I fixed it when we took the baby for the weekend.” 

“I think you made it worse.” 

He suspected this was going to be one of those things that he needed explained to him. “By falling down the chimney?” 

“By interrupting the weekend.” 

“Oh.” He wasn’t entirely clear, but accepted her superior knowledge on the subject. “So I have to make up with him again.” 

She rubbed his index finger with her thumb. “I think you need to make up with him for the first time.” 

“Why are people so difficult?” But it did explain why he hadn’t seen John around in the last three days. Now that the initial crisis was over, John probably didn’t want to look at his ugly mug. 

“Because human beings are complicated. And don’t exempt yourself from being difficult. You’re just as difficult as the rest of us. Now go to sleep. And we can talk about shoring things up with John tomorrow.” 

“Yeah. Tomorrow.” But he knew he probably wasn’t going to sleep. He’d just be mulling over everything all night.


	7. The Talk, and the Other Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock tries to patch things with John. With varying results.

7.

John said he was coming up at six, when he got home from work, to look at Sherlock’s stitches. There were certain things that were nice about having a medical doctor about the house. But It was less attractive of an idea to him now that Molly had charged him with setting things to right with his best friend. 

She’d even crushed up one of his anti-anxiety tablets for him to drink with his dinner. Which was probably the worst plan ever, considering it tasted like hell that way. But inter-personal… things were not his area of specialty. And if he got overly anxious, the odds were pretty high that he’d botch the whole thing and get himself into worse trouble. 

He pecked away on the computer, looking over a few of the emails sent to his blog in the last few days. Nothing terribly interesting. Even if he felt like going outside with a purple and yellow face and a jaw that constantly felt heavy and kind of agonizing. Well, really agonizing. Still there were a few cases he could give advice on without actually leaving the flat. Some of them were downright annoyingly easy, but one could only be cooped up for so long. 

The flat door opened slowly, and Sherlock closed the laptop lid. Maybe he could put off sorting this until next time. “John.” 

“How’s the jaw?” 

He gave a faint closed-lipped smile. “Same as yesterday, really.” But now he had an awful taste in his mouth that he couldn’t get rid of. 

John nodded, then looked him over. “It’s healing, if that counts for anything. Let me look at the stitches real quick, then I’ll be gone.” He gently tugged on the tape covering the tiny sutures

“You don’t have to go.” 

“Are you sure you want me hanging around here?” he asked as he inspected the wound, prodding at the edge of the cut. “I mean, you’ve fixed things with Molly, right? She’ll be home soon.” 

He winced as John replaced the tape above his eyebrow before moving on to look at his nose. “Yeah. We did. But I didn’t patch things up with you.” 

“We’re fine, yeah? I think what you did was stupid. Who goes down a chimney head first? But… we’re fine.” 

“Ahh,” Sherlock yelped as the tape tugged at his bruised nose when John removed it. “I make bad life choices,” he admitted. He grabbed John’s hand and pulled it away from his nose. That was so painful he couldn’t even concentrate on what he was trying to do here. He held onto it, not letting John go back for another round. “We didn’t resolve the… other thing. My other poor bit of planning. At the vicarage.” 

John sighed and tried to step away, but Sherlock still had his hand. “Look, it’s over and done with, it’s fine.” 

“And then I tried to say sorry by taking Billie and ended up making it worse. What I’m trying to say is… I am sorry. For real.” 

Looking down at their clasped hands, John paused, gathering his thoughts. “That’s the first time you’ve really said sorry to me about anything. Ever. How do I know you mean it?” 

“Because there’s no bomb about to explode beneath us?” 

“That’s a plus.” 

Sherlock’s shoulders slumped. “Molly yelled at me when I got out of surgery. She basically said if I was going to be an idiot when you weren’t around, I ought to just have sex with you?” He still wasn’t entirely clear on her reasoning. 

John frowned and continued staring at their hands. “Okay.” 

“Um…” Ahh, he’d lost it. He’d been working up to some point and it was gone. “Er… there’s something I’m trying to say. It’s… Molly thinks there’s sexual tension between us?” 

John tore his hand out of Sherlock’s and tossed both of his arms in the air. “I swear to god. I’m going to murder everyone in this building.” 

Sherlock squinted. “Was that… not good?” He was just repeating what Molly had conveyed to him. 

“Molly thinks it, my wife tells me about it regularly, and Mrs. Hudson thinks we’re cheating on our respective partners with each other. I can’t stand it any more. I want to take a full length advert out in all the papers declaring that John Watson is not gay. Maybe I can hire a skywriter.” 

OH god. He’d botched it. 

Sherlock’s heart started racing. “What I mean is--I’m saying--if you’re not--ok. Look. That’s just what they’re saying. I’m not saying anything. I’m just--Mary kissed me on the lips yesterday.” The last came rushing out as some sort of strange defense. 

John rubbed his eyes. “What the hell are you getting at, exactly.” 

Sherlock leaned back in his chair, the brace that had been on his nose flapping against his cheek. “I have no idea what I’m saying. I’m saying… I’m confused. I’m very confused. I’m not sure why I did what I did in the vicarage but maybe it was some unconscious desire. And I don’t know. And it wasn’t right to… have a stiff wind in your face and I’m sorry about that. But I don’t know what to do.” 

“What the hell are you even saying? What does this have to do with Mary kissing you? Mary felt up Molly when they were drunk. Absurd things happen in this household. I don’t know what to tell you other than that.” 

“You know,” Sherlock began with a tight, terse pulling at his lips. “I’m pouring my heart out to you and you’re not listening.” 

Hands on his hips, John turned away, staring into the kitchen. “Pouring out your heart? I don’t even know what you are talking about. DO you want to shag me? What does it matter what Mary and Molly think, if you do or you don’t?” 

Sherlock’s stomach knotted instantly. “I’m with Molly…” 

“That is not the question I asked.” 

He looked up at the ceiling and sighed, gathering his thoughts. “In another time, and in another place, yes, I would. I mean… if you would. If we both would.” 

“I don’t even know what that means.” John collapsed into his chair, well away from Sherlock. This was not how intimate conversations were supposed to happen. “So you’re saying you’d shag me, if I wanted to shag you and we weren’t attached?” 

Sherlock looked around as if something or someone in the flat could save him now. “Um… yeah. I think so.” 

“I’m not gay.” 

“Rrrrrrr,” Sherlock ground out through his wired teeth. “Obviously you’re not gay. You have a child. With a woman. But there are other possibilities. You’re the last person I expected to be obsessed with ones and zeroes.” 

“I’m not--” 

“I swear, if you say that one more time I will get up out of this chair and hit you.” 

“But--” John clenched his mouth shut, not entirely sure that Sherlock wouldn’t. 

“I will let the entire thing go if you just tell me that in another time, and in another place, if you and I weren’t so goddamned repressed, that we wouldn’t have ended up together. Just tell me that, and I’ll drop it.” 

John’s head lowered until his chin hit his chest. He closed his eyes. 

Sherlock had no idea what to do with that reaction. No reaction wasn’t a reaction. It resolved nothing. He was where he was yesterday evening, when he and Molly had been going at it. Why did he even try to sort things with people again? 

Life was better when he didn’t care what people thought of him. 

No. Not better. Easier. 

John’s eyes opened after the longest time. “I don’t know,” he said in a quiet, hollow voice. “I know I’d have stuck with you forever. No matter what.” 

“You still do. You wouldn’t be in a flat downstairs, or running after me at every opportunity if you weren’t at least a little stuck to me. Maybe. Molly says.” 

“Am I having this discussion with you, or am I having this discussion with Molly? Because I am about ready to tell her and Mary to stuff it.” He let out a huff. “Yeah, ok? You’re my best friend. Why wouldn’t I follow you into fire? It’s not like Mary objects. It’s not like Molly objects. Just because we do the things we do--that is NOT the same as wanting to shag.” 

Sherlock chuckled. “Ok. I believe you.” 

“Do you?” 

Sherlock nodded. “Umm hm. I believe that you believe what you’re saying. And that’s all that really matters.” He poked at the splint hanging off of his nose. “Can we put this back on? The tape’s getting itchy.” 

A not-quite smile tugged at the corner of John’s lips. “Yeah. I can put that back on. It looks OK. We’ll have to air it out for a few minutes and I’ll put some new tape on it. For someone who never eats and never sleeps, you do have an impressive rate of healing.” 

“It’s all the children’s vitamins I take,” Sherlock quipped. 

“Yeah. I’m sure it’s something like that.” John peeled off the remainder of the tape and took a look at Sherlock’s nose. “It’s in good shape, really.” 

“Second time I’ve broken it. I guess the second time’s a charm.” 

“Huh. I think Mary said something about your mum saying that. Jumped off the garage?” 

“We don’t talk about that.” Sherlock itched a spot on his nose that had been bothering him for ages. “By the way, I was a big boy and finally told her to bugger off.” 

John smiled. “Molly is probably happy to hear that.” 

“Yeah, I was afraid if I didn’t, Molly might be up on murder charges soon. But Molly’s clever. She could always make it look like an accident, I’m sure. If not, I’d help her. I mean, she is my mother. But I like Molly more. So, yes, I’d cover up a murder for Molly.” 

“That sounds like true love. Dissolving a body in acid for the one you care for.” 

“Everyone’s obsessed with acid. A little dry ice, a sealed trunk, she’ll be half way to Scotland before anyone noticed. NO dismemberment, no melting her flesh and then having to deal with a tub of biohazard. Just… ship her to Scotland. Let THEM deal with it.” 

“You think about murdering your mother more than is healthy.” 

“But I haven’t done it yet so it’s just a fantasy and doesn’t count.” 

John tore off a few strips of tape and had them at the ready. “And how many people do you fantasize about killing?” 

“Three.” 

“Dare I--”

“No.” 

John laughed. “Yeah. I thought so.” He put the splint back in place and taped everything up properly again. 

“So are we ok?” Sherlock thought it was better to ask, since he actually had no idea. 

“I suppose.” 

“So not really.” 

John shoved his hands in his pockets. “I need to have a think.” 

Instead of pressing it, Sherlock simply nodded. There’d be another time to finish this awkward and painful conversation. He’d just have severe anxiety until then. “Thanks for, uh, looking after my face.” 

Without anything clever to respond with, John nodded and headed toward the door. “Take care of yourself. No more chimneys for a while.” 

“I’ll do my best.” 

##

John crawled into bed, pulling up the covers until he noticed a small body between himself and his wife. “Why isn’t she sleeping in her bed this time?” 

“No clue. She just said she couldn’t. I tried to walk her back in when she fell asleep, but she woke up and we started all over again.” She tucked the blanket under the toddler’s chin. “It can’t last forever.” 

“I don’t want to get kicked in the stomach tonight.” 

Mary kissed him. “Then maybe you want to sleep with your back to her. Then you only have to worry about your kidneys.” 

“You’re such a smart arse. You always have an answer for everything.”

“It’s why everyone loves me.” 

John pulled the pillow under his head a little more firmly. “Yeah, everyone loves you. What’s this I hear about you kissing Sherlock on the lips.” 

She rubbed his arm. “Oh, don’t be sour about it. He was out of places I could kiss him. And it’s hardly the first time. It’s not like anything’s going on. I love him to pieces, and I know he loves me back in his weird Sherlock sort of way.” 

“Yeah. His weird Sherlock way. Today he said if things were different and we both weren’t attached, and I said yes, he’d shag me.” 

Mary propped herself up on her elbow. “For real? Yes! An admission! This is so much further than we ever thought we’d get.” 

“What?” 

“Molly and I have been working on this for months. The sexual tension is thick and going stale. We can’t stand it any more.” 

“There’s no sexual ten--I’m not gay.” 

She caressed his cheek. “Oh bless you. You dear thing.” 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

Mary laughed quietly, trying not to wake up their child. “What was it your old army mates called you? Three Continents Watson? I know you have all the experience in the world. I do. But don’t pretend that whatever happens in the army stays in the army.”

“I don’t even know how you--” 

She giggled. “I didn’t know until you just confirmed it for me. Love, there’s nothing wrong with liking blokes too. And if you want to shag Sherlock senseless, I understand.” 

“What? Just like that? You understand, and I should just have sex with my best friend because you’re giving me permission?” 

“John, you’re an adult. It IS possible to acknowledge that you want to, without actually doing it. Molly and I have talked extensively about it. You two need to clear the air about this. Or just shag already. I’m almost ready to accept either at this point. Look, if you two end up… um, more intimate, we’ll work something out. Some ground rules so that everyone’s comfortable.” 

“I am not shagging Sherlock Holmes. Not even with your benediction and blessing.” 

“What I mean is--I”m trying to be supportive. Lord. I can’t even be supportive without you getting defensive. Did you ever think that’s the real problem? How you get defensive every time something like this is brought up?” 

“No. Because I’m still not gay.” 

Mary put her head back on her pillow and closed her eyes. “You are a hard nut to crack, John Watson. But I am persistent.” 

##

John stared at the ceiling. In another life Sherlock would have shagged him. He had no idea what that meant, considering it took him months of trying and actual therapy--with a therapist-- to shag Molly due to some weird ‘freezing’ issue. Would Sherlock have gone to therapy for John? 

There was no way to even imagine what that would look like. Sherlock, man of logic and repression, going to therapy just so that he could tickle John’s prostate. 

That thing. That thing that had happened in the military. It hadn’t even counted as sex, really. A few hand jobs, a bit of oral sex (which he contended still didn’t count as sex) was nothing. It meant nothing. It was a few blokes who hadn’t had anything resembling sex in ages helping out a friend. A good friend. A friend he’d spent all his time with. 

He wasn’t gay. 

 

Sliding his phone off of the night stand, he unplugged it and opened up the text application. 

__

\--You wouldn’t really have slept with me, would you have?

The response took a full minute and a half. 

__

\--I said if things were different. If we both weren’t so stiff upper lip about the whole thing. 

\--And if I didn’t have the freezing problem. 

John had never gotten a satisfactory answer about that whole business. 

\--So then it never would have happened. You’d freeze up and I’m not gay. I don’t know why we are dwelling on what isn’t. 

\--Because apparently we have sexual tension to work through. So sayeth the women in our lives.

\--Mary keeps saying she’ll work something out if we really must shag. 

\--“Must” is a murky category. I can barely keep one relationship in order. Another would completely tap out my emotional reserves. 

\--And I am still not gay. 

\--You know, bisexuality is quite a real thing. Apparently Molly had some experience with it in medical school. 

\--Bisexual. whatever. I love you. I wouldn’t shag you. 

\--Good answer. 

\--Good answer? 

\--We’d be just as we are now, but I would not have the sex drive sufficient to please you, based on your past number of partners, and I would tense up anytime anything even remotely pleasurable happened. 

\--I still don’t get it. Your… thing. 

\--Sensory processing disorder. Hypersensitivity. Basically Molly practically ignores anything resembling reciprocation and we get on just fine. 

\--Weird. 

\--It makes sense in relation to other symptoms in my life. If we are choosing to pathologize my existence. But, yes. Weird. 

\--Molly’s asleep? 

\--No. She’s playing that stupid number puzzle game on her phone. 

\--Wanna come down here? 

\--I don’t want to put trousers on. You come up here.

\--Since when have trousers been required? 

\--Mrs. Hudson was offended recently by my nudity. 

\--Right. On my way up.


	8. An End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John smiled, relaxing. “Are you sure, because she has all of your issues with your mother worked out. Apparently you have issues with your father as well, even if you don’t know it.” 
> 
> “Oh kill me. I didn’t know she was a psychotherapist as well. I will introduce her to my other two head-shrinkers. They can solve all my problems over lunch and just tell me the answers.”

8.

John let himself in quietly. “Hey, you got the kettle going,” he said, impressed. “Full pot. Wrists feeling better?” 

Sherlock, leaning against the counter wearing boxers and an open dressing gown, wiggled his fingers. “Molly filled it up for tomorrow. I just flipped the switch. Of all the things to go wrong…” He sighed. “You don’t miss your hands until you need them.” 

John decided to spare Sherlock and grabbed mugs from the cupboard, and the tea. “Apple Spice Sleepy-time Tea?” 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “Yes, John. It’s mine. I confess. I drink the Sleepy-time Tea.” He nudged his head toward the bedroom. “She thinks it calms her nerves. I believe it’s a placebo.” 

“And you got your medical education from where, exactly?” 

“I have three pieces of paper that state I am a competent chemist. There is absolutely nothing in apples or cinnamon to calm anyone’s anything.” 

The kettle clicked off and John was kind enough to handle the whole tea…thing. Sherlock hated doing it, and now it was impossible. While John was doing that, he closed the bedroom door. He had a feeling things were going to get… interesting. 

They retired to their usual chairs in the living room. Sherlock kept waiting on the tea to cool down. Hot things really weren’t conducive to the situation in his mouth at the moment. Everything was a drama, even drinking right now. John held onto his mug in a tight grip, fingers slid through the handle. It was quiet. Sherlock supposed neither of them really knew where to start. It had been all he could do to get everything out last time. Well, everything he actually did. 

“So, should we just text again? That is less awkward.” 

John breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh god. Good. It’s awkward for you too.” 

Sherlock shrugged. “Now that I think about it, I wish that conversation had gone differently. Mostly I wish I wouldn’t have mentioned… you know. The thing. Shagging. You.” 

“We can pretend it never happened?” John asked hopefully. 

Sherlock tried the tea. Still a little too hot. “I think that it might be too late for that. I think… we’re making it worse instead of better.” 

Nodding, John looked into his mug. “Yeah. It’s getting weirder. Look. I love you. I said that. And Mary loves you. Apparently everyone in this house loves you. In some insane way.” 

Sherlock smiled. “Yeah. It’s hard to say… I love her. In whatever way I do.” None of them seemed to have the words to figure it out. He didn’t want to shag her. But he didn’t want her far away for very long. He loved her smile. The arch of her eyebrows when she was being particularly sarcastic. She got to the heart of him in some ways that Molly and John did not. “I wasn’t happy when you two were far away.” 

“The suburbs aren’t far away.” 

“It might as well have been the end of the earth without both of you here.” 

“Better not let Molly hear you say that,” John chuckled. “She might get jealous.” 

Sherlock rolled his eyes. “I think she knows what’s what.” He took a sip of the tea, finally at a reasonable temperature for his tortured mouth. “And I already told you that I’d shag you in another life where you said yes.” 

“Not gay, not bisexual, not WHATEVER.” John sighed. “You know what I mean.” 

“That you love me but you wouldn’t sleep with me,” he reiterated. “Would you share a bed with me?” 

“We’ve done that often enough. You snore and sometimes you twitch. I don’t know how Molly lives with it.” 

Sherlock hummed thoughtfully. “So I have been told. So. There we are. Apparently the sexual tension is all on my end. Which is unbearable considering how… that has been a thing. For me. With Molly.” God he hated getting into the details. John knew most of them, he just didn’t want to have to say them again. “So god knows how that would have worked itself out.” 

It was John’s turn to have a good think about it. “So. There is too much sexual tension between us, I have already stated I wouldn’t sleep with you, you probably wouldn’t have been able to sleep with me because of… reasons. And now we’re attached so it is moot? Do I have this right?”

“That sums it up spectacularly.” 

“So technically when you hit me with your penis, it was assault.” 

Sherlock clenched his eyes shut. “Technically. Is there a proper way to say sorry for that?” 

“I… don’t know.” He squinted. “Probably not. But I forgave you for… the thing.” The thing they didn’t talk about. The two years he was away, the thing he made John witness. “So I guess I can forgive you for this. But if you were any other human being I probably would have cut it off. Just so you know.” 

“Yay?” Sherlock muttered sarcastically. 

“I’m still not having sex with you.” 

“Tell that to your wife. She’s on about it more than my mother is about babies.” 

John finished his tea and set aside the mug. “So, this was a great conversation. We’ve resolved absolutely nothing because absolutely nothing seems to be the problem.” 

“Well, I did apologize for the vicarage thing and you seem to have finally accepted, so there’s that. Just lie to Mary and say we have it all resolved.” 

##

Just tell Mary we have it all sorted. That had worked. 

John was a notoriously bad liar. And Mary had that sixth sense with Sherlock. 

What was he supposed to say? John really didn’t think about Sherlock and sex in the same thought. Ever. And Sherlock would have slept with John had things been different, and were he not hypersensitive to actual pleasurable activity (which explained so much about the chemical burn marks on his hands and fingernails), so there really wasn’t any sexual tension. 

“OH come on. That is your big revelation?” Mary tucked the baby under her arm like a rugby ball so she could clean up the table with her free hand. “That nothing’s happening, nothing was going to happen, and nothing is happening in the future? You disappoint me, sir.” 

John ran a hand over his hair and covered the leftovers. “You know, maybe if you and Molly are this hung up on sexual tension, maybe it is YOU TWO who should have a tryst.” He waved a hand in front of his face. “And if you do I just don’t want to know about it. Not because I care. But because I don’t want to know about it.” 

“Oh covering your ears and singing la-la-la again. That’s exceptionally effective. And mature. Have I mentioned mature?” The baby squeaked and kicked her legs out until Mary put her down. “Be good,” she ordered. Not that they listened at that age. But she felt like she was doing something. Being in charge. That sort of thing. 

Billie went stumbling into the sitting room, a shriek of pleasure escaping her as she toddled. 

“Even the baby doesn’t believe you.” 

“The baby thinks Father Christmas is real.” 

Mary looked at him with that all-knowing sort of glare. “My point exactly.” 

“So it looks like I am being given my marching orders,” John said as he closed the refrigerator door. “I’m to go back up there and hash this out again, even though there’s nothing to discuss. With someone who doesn’t really want to discuss it. What exactly am I supposed to say, again?” 

She turned on the water at the sink. “The passive-aggressive bit won’t work on me.” 

“Well, since you have such a fantastic hold on what the problem is, perhaps YOU should hash it out with Sherlock. And while you’re at it, explain everything to me because I am really missing something here.” 

Mary shut off the water and turned around. “Oh for the love of god. OK. You two are not about to have sex. Nor were you previously. Which I think is a lie. Nor will you in the future. Right. Check. You just have to work out that bit where you’re married to me, and still married to him from the last go around before he shuffled off for two years. I’m not sure Sherlock has a romantic bone in his body, but you two are definitely in love with each other.” 

“To which he will reiterate ‘I’m with Molly.’” 

“Because it is so completely impossible to be in love with more than one person at once. She’s a hell of a lot better for him than you are.” 

“Hey, wait! Who got him to be more cautious? Who got him to stop smoking? Twice! Who got him to eat actual protein instead of toast all the time? I was GREAT for Sherlock. And you know what? He was great for me. He got rid of my limp, he gave me something to wake up for every day, and he was--is the best friend I’ve ever had. I think I’m JUST as good as Molly, if not BETTER,” he said in loud defense of himself. 

SHe snapped her fingers and pointed at him. “See? There! You ARE in love with him.”

“I am not breaking up my marriage, or his relationship just so I can NOT shag Sherlock. Sherlock ‘I think I am better than god’ Holmes. Not going to happen.” 

“Oh god. Ok you aren’t going to shag. Molly will be pleased. She’s a sensitive soul, you know. But you’re in love with him. And god knows, he’s in love with you. So just clear that out. No one’s saying you have to break up our marriage. In fact, I’d kind of prefer you didn’t. I happen to be a little attached to you and would like to keep you around a bit longer.” 

“So what am I supposed to do when I’m off getting into trouble with him? Just ignore it? Or when I’m with you--or I don’t bloody know. I was much happier not being self-aware. There are certain things a wife should just keep to herself about her husband and her husband’s best friend.” 

“Smothered, John,” she teased. “The tension was SMOTHERING. You two would just be silent and stare at each other all the time and it was awful.” 

“...No we didn’t?” But he couldn’t exactly be sure. 

“Since the minute he got back. The only reason I didn’t worry was because he never interfered with us, and I know he has something for me. In that Sherlock way.” 

“Could we have maybe had this discussion a few years ago instead of now?”

Mary washed a few plates before turning back to him. “I don’t know. I thought it wasn’t a problem.” 

“You have a very odd definition of something not being a problem.” After throwing away the napkins, he wiped off the table and sat down. “And where exactly does Molly fall in this grand order of things?” 

Pulling a glass out of the soapy water, Mary shrugged. “She assumed you two were an item before he went away. It’s complicated. We talk about it when she’s drunk.” 

“You mean when you’re both drunk and can’t remember half of what you’re talking about, and are possibly feeling each other up.” 

“Oh it was one time. It was New Years Eve. Get over it,” she said in annoyance, hitting him in the head with the tea towel. “Just for that you get to dry all of this. You should have heard her go on about how ‘it wasn’t like that’ with Sherlock when I first conned her into moving into the B flatBecause Sherlock is a dunce and still carries a torch for you. But mostly because he’s a dunce. Those two have been like awkward ships passing in the night… awkwardly. For years. I just helped make the magic happen. Molly knows who he comes home to at night. The rest of this… chaos is just getting on her last frayed nerve. And she needs a better job. One that isn’t going to slowly kill her and give her a shorter fuse at home.” 

“There are other hospitals with morgues,” John said flippantly. Molly was an adult. Certainly she could sort out her own shitty schedule. 

“Not dignifying that with a response.” 

“No. You’re just going to take full credit for those two getting together.” 

Mary smiled widely, hands on her hips like Peter Pan about to crow. “YUP.” 

John got up from the chair and stared at the tea towel for a moment, like it were a foreign object, before he began to dry. “Sometimes, I feel like I am in the Twilight Zone. Basically, everyone around me is mad, and I just want to get all my paperwork done on time so I can get out of work early. Next thing I know, Bigfoot is going to be dating Mrs. Hudson, and dinosaurs will have moved into our flat.” 

Mary kissed his cheek. “Don’t be silly, dear. The dinosaurs are being weaponized by the government as we speak. Mycroft has a dossier.” She winked and left him to the dishes. Billie was looking at the remote control for the television, desperately trying to figure out how to turn everything on. 

She scooped up the girl and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Oh love. Mummy can only take so much children’s entertainment for one day.” Six to eight hours was about her limit. “How does mummy’s baby feel about evening drama?” She was sure there was some show in repeat somewhere she could mindlessly view while she cuddled her child. 

John poked his head into the sitting room, teatowel still in hand. “There’s just one thing I don’t understand--” 

Mary turned up the volume on the telly. “Can’t hear you. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself, dear.” She had no idea what the question was, but she didn’t care. She was done imparting her superior wisdom for the evening. The love of her life was just going to have to wing it on this one. 

Then again, she’d let him wing it last time, and it had gone oh so well. Second time was a charm?

##

“And then when I did a couple of Google searches, it was blatantly obvious who had the most to benefit from the girl’s death, so I rung up Lestrade on the phone…” 

Molly propped herself up on her arm as she readjusted the sheets around them. “You called him. Like… on the telephone?” 

“I do that sometimes.” 

She got a sneaky smile on her face, making her nose scrunch in just that way. “Wrists bothering you? too much texting? Too many messages to me about how convalescence was going to kill you?” 

His eyes narrowed. “I was bored, alright? I wanted to see if he had anything else for me.” 

Satisfied, she put her head back on the pillow. “Ok. Go on.” 

“Well, you ruined it. Now there’s no more story to tell. The father killed her and pinned it on the uncle who had no reason whatsoever to do it, And anyway the father confessed after I told them about the evidence they would surely find in the girl’s cupboard. Which they did.” 

She snuggled a little closer to him for warmth. “All that from a single paragraph left on your website.” 

“I can’t help it. I’m good.” 

“And going stir-crazy. Listen, why don’t you stop in the morgue tomorrow. It’ll break up the endless monotony of natural deaths and car crash victims. We can get some lunch.” She winced thinking about his jaw. “Well, the cafeteria has some lovely fruit smoothies this time of year.” They weren’t really lovely. They weren’t really smoothies. They were basically watered down yogurt drinks. But she wasn’t telling him that. 

“I am not sticking my face out that front door until my nose is healed.” 

Rolling her eyes, Molly slid onto her back. “Vanity, thy name is Sherlock.” 

“It’s not vanity. The jaw thing is less noticeable. If you run around with a splinted nose, EVERYONE asks you what happened. Everyone. Which means talking to EVERYONE. Do you think that would make me pleasant lunch company?” 

“Valid point. Turn off the light.” 

“Are you going to be on your phone forever?” 

She turned her back to him and fluffed her pillow, grabbing her phone. “I don’t know, are you?” 

“That’s different. I’m doing research.” 

“Oh my puzzle games are less important than you looking at impact ratings on toddler car seats like a paranoid uncle all night?” 

He was quiet for several heartbeats. “Yes?” 

“I’m going to tell John you’re being paranoid about his child’s safety again.” 

“Because I need another fight.” He shut off the light, clutching his phone, but refusing to press the button that would light it up and let her know he was abusing the ‘phones are ok in bed as long as you actually get some sleep’ rule. “I was still in the hospital and Mary was lecturing me about giving her child TOO MANY fruits. I thought fruit was good for them.” 

Molly sighed and shook her head, her finger sliding puzzle pieces around the screen. “It is not for us to know,” she said mysteriously. “Some things I never want to find out. But I think maybe a whole basket of blueberries was a bit much.” 

“She liked them. They kept her quiet. What’s the harm?” Finally he gave in and opened the browser on his phone, turning his back to her as well. “But we do let her play with a skull because it keeps her quiet. We’re not even fit babysitters, really. Sometimes I think I should just confess to John that I take his child to crime scenes.” 

“Who doesn’t want another fight on his hands? I am personally not emotionally fit right now for World War III.” 

He reached a hand behind him and rubbed her hip. “That’s because you work for idiots and fools. And you never say no.” 

“We’re short staffed--” 

“You’ve been short staffed for MONTHS. They have no incentive to hire someone new if they can just pay you overtime. Believe it or not, overtime for two employees is cheaper than hiring one new individual because they don’t have to pay National Insurance, nor do they have to worry about things like paperwork, parking spaces and all those other benefit...things. Therefore, the only way they will learn that they can’t push Molly Hooper around is if Molly Hooper doesn’t let them push her around.” 

“Aww. That’s kind of sweet.”

“And you’re more bearable to be around when you’re well-slept.” 

Her heel connected with the crook of his leg, behind his knee. “There goes Sherlock, ruining another moment. I can break both of your legs, you know. That bit of you isn’t hurt yet.” 

“Why are you so VIOLENT?” 

“....Because I care?” 

“Maybe you had a troubled childhood. Did you ever happen to dissect a peacock with a butcher knife by any chance?” 

Molly laughed and reached behind her, pinching his behind. 

“I’m not saying my childhood was troubled,” Sherlock continued. “But I am related to Mycroft, and no one believes that Pete the Peacock died a natural death. I kept pushing for a necropsy (so I could watch) but no one bought into it. And my mother used to tell us afternoon stories about nuclear winter. So it’s perfectly natural that I’m slightly demented. But you, I can’t figure out why YOU are always trying to rip my face off when you drag me around by the ear.”

“I just do what works,” she teased back. “You know, I’m glad you and John worked all of that out. It was getting creepy.” 

Sherlock typed something into the search engine on the phone and opened a page before responding. “Yup. All taken care of. No shagging necessary. Just, uh… misunderstanding. Though, if both you and Mary die in an untimely manner I have my eye on a property in the country where he and I can live out the remainder of our earthly existence in blissful harmony.” 

“Wait, if I DON’T die an untimely death, where are WE supposed to retire to?” 

“Scotland,” he said with incredible confidence. “I have a spot picked out. We’ll build something from scratch.” 

Molly laughed. “OH my god. You’ve thought this through. And if John and I die untimely deaths?” 

“Oh no, that’s a trick question. There’s no right answer. Other than ‘wherever Mary wants to go.’ Because I want to live.” 

Leaving her phone for a moment, she turned around and put an arm around him, kissing his shoulder. “You’re not supposed to say you have retirement plans for when your partner dies to be with your best friend in the country. You can plan it. You’re just not supposed to say it.” 

“You told a judge that a victim’s head cracked like a melon under the wheels of a truck. I’m not sure I should be taking lessons from you. You did make his whole family cry.” 

“I got nervous. I get… creative when I’m nervous.” 

He put his hand on hers. “I sneak into court every time you’re testifying.” 

“Because you like a good circus?” 

“I ought to start bringing popcorn.” 

“You’re a piece of work, Sherlock Holmes.” She looked over his shoulder. “You are not buying them another toddler seat. If you do, Mary will probably murder you in your sleep for questioning their parenting. Again.” 

“Well, I worry about her head and impact speeds over thirty km per hour. I read a study--” 

She took the phone out of his hands. “No.” 

“Yes, I really did read a study.” 

“I mean, no. No more impact rating statements tonight. You took that child to twelve crime scenes in the last two years. You are not worried about emotional trauma, but you are suddenly worried about physical trauma?” 

“And proper cranial development. I measure it every time she comes up here. I have a spreadsheet.” 

She squeezed him. “You are a nutter. And this just proves it. Who makes spreadsheets of child development and adds data points multiple times per week?” 

“Someone who is very thorough and has a deep respect for the sciences.” 

That caused her to bite his shoulder, gently pressing her top teeth into his flesh. “I suppose I should just let you do it. Get it out of your system. Otherwise you will be weighing the fecal matter of any child we would produce.” 

“Do you think Mary would let--” 

“NO.” 

“Are we talking about having children?” 

“Definitely NO. They were mythical children from a fantasy situation in which we are not both strange, awkward deer, meandering through life in a china shop with impossibly big horns.” 

“Antlers is the word you’re looking for. But come on, we have our moments. They’re few. Far between. And often involve murders. But I think we’d be decent at it. Raising mythical children in our fantasy situation.” 

She thought about it. “As long as this is a fantasy situation, YOU get to carry our mythical children. The whole idea of having my organs crushed and pushed up toward my lungs freaks me out. If I had to actually live through it, I would just think about the location of my liver at every moment of the day and I wouldn’t get anything done.” 

He shrugged. “Sure. I’d carry our mythical children. I think I would be one attractive looking pregnant person.” 

She giggled. “We’ll have to let your shirts out.” 

“I can borrow Mycroft’s old shirts.” He chuckled so hard it made his teeth vibrate, which was not comfortable at all. “Go shopping at Big, Tall and Mycroft.” 

“I think if you two were ever nice to each other, your mother would die of shock.” 

“Oooh. Good plan. Then it’s ‘natural causes’ and we don’t need to lose the body anywhere. I wonder if Mycroft would be game.” 

“Why do you always twist my words around?” 

“As a sign of my constant affection?” He kissed her hand. “And because of the puzzle game. Mostly because of the puzzle game.” 

“Oh piss off,” she muttered, turning back toward her phone. At least the phone didn’t talk back to her. 

 

“You have no idea,” John muttered, looking at Sherlock’s nose. “I’m half-nuts from all this. I wish since they’re so smart they would just sit us down and tell us what all of our problems are and how to solve them.” 

Sherlock twitched his nose, trying it out. It was sore but much better. “I don’t know. I think they’ve shored things up pretty well. I think Mary’s explanation is as good as any. We’ll just pine for each other for eternity or something and everything will be fine.” 

“You just have an answer for everything. I’m going to leave the splint off. It should be ok. Don’t sleep on your face, fall down any chimneys, piss off any victims, and it should be OK.” 

“It was only the once. And he never even got near my nose.” 

John pulled the glove off of his left hand. “Just behave. Are we fine with the ‘in love’ thing? I just want to check. Mostly because I am tired of talking about it. With you, with Mary. Definitely with Mary.” 

Sherlock poked at his nose like a small child checking to see if it still hurt. “Yeah. I might retire with you, but I refuse to have your mythical babies.” 

“You are Molly are talking about kids now? After all that stuff with your mum?” 

He stopped mid-poke. “Well, not exactly. We decided that if we had mythical children, I would need to be the one to have them because the idea of having her organs squished around doesn’t appeal to Molly. I decided, since they’re mythical children that don’t exist, that I would be an ideal candidate to pick up the slack.” 

John tossed his gloves into the biohazard bin Molly now made Sherlock keep in the flat. “You two really are ideal for each other. I can’t think of two other people who would have come to such a reasonable compromise.” 

“Oh shut up. I’m not the one who knocked up my fiancee three weeks before the wedding.” He rolled his eyes. “And a doctor too. Because apparently neither of you have heard of contraception.” 

John pointed a finger at Sherlock, prepared to poke his nose, a lot harder than Sherlock had done to himself earlier. “We just got a little lazy. That’s all. Maybe we subconsciously wanted to be pregnant.” 

“Mary thinks you’re broody.” 

“Mary thinks a lot of things. I don’t even want to tell you what she thinks about the situation with you and your mum.” 

“Please don’t,” Sherlock said, snorting as best as one could with a wired jaw. “When I need a good silencer, I will ask Mary. When I need to know the approximate amount of roughage that one can feed a small child at any given time, I will ask Mary. Anything involving her opinions on me and my mother--no. I will sooner ask Mycroft.” 

John smiled, relaxing. “Are you sure, because she has all of your issues with your mother worked out. Apparently you have issues with your father as well, even if you don’t know it.” 

“Oh kill me. I didn’t know she was a psychotherapist as well. I will introduce her to my other two head-shrinkers. They can solve all my problems over lunch and just tell me the answers.” 

They both laughed. Mary was brilliant, funny, intuitive, and more than willing to get into all of Sherlock’s business, now that they lived in the same building. Worse yet, she’d taken to giving Mrs. Hudson advice on men during their weekly catch-up sessions. “I swear, she’s always been like this. I know why she was friends with Janine but before the wedding, she explained fifty-seven reasons why Janine really didn’t want to date this bloke from where she used to work, and she ended up being spot-on. He was caught on insider trading a month or so after that. Apparently she is now a matchmaker, and someone who will help all of your relationships to death.” 

“Yes, she did work rather hard to thrust Molly and me into each other’s arms.” 

“You did just say you’d have her non-existent babies. I think she did pull a perfect match on that one.” 

“Why wouldn’t I have her non-existent babies? They’re non-existent, firstly. Second, despite what actual horrible parents we would be, and the likelihood of actual real children being taken from us by child services being fairly high? I think we’d be fantastic parents of mythical children. My best friend once said I’d make a pretty good dad.” 

John laughed. “Way to use my own words against me. When’s your appointment for the jaw?” 

“I don’t know. Molly put it into my phone. The last time we went, all I could think about was how the appointments lady was covertly destroying blue office pens when no one was looking. Dates meant nothing to me just then.” 

Sitting in his own chair, John got comfortable. “Because there’s a pen mystery?” 

“I haven’t exactly had a lot of cases over a three lately.” 

Crossing his ankles in front of him, John tapped the arm of the chair. “I think I can solve that for you. Everyone’s annoyed with the new pens. Everyone has their own way of dealing with it. Some people steal them. Some people destroy them. Molly and Mary plan on blowing up the corporation in charge of their distribution.” He shrugged. “Sometimes office stuff takes on this weird life-or-death feel. I guess because offices are so mundane.” 

“Mmm. Glad there’s nothing mundane around here,” Sherlock said absently, reading over something on his phone. “Remember how I don’t leave the flat for anything below a six?” 

“Or until your jaw is healed? Why?” 

“Found something that might be a five. Could be fun.” 

“By fun you mean dangerous.” 

“I won’t make you lug around the laptop this time.” 

“I’m not lugging around your ipad either.” 

“Come on, John,” he whined. “For science.” 

John sat forward, taking the phone from Sherlock. “Gems from the natural history museum? Come on, that’s a huge theft. Has to be a seven. Or an eight. Not that you’re leaving the flat for this case.” 

Sherlock waved a hand in front of him. “No, no no. I know how they did it. I know the HOW, I just don’t know the who. That’s where YOU come in.” 

John pulled out his own phone. “I better tell Mary I’ll be late for dinner. Or maybe not coming at all. Or maybe falling down a chimney if things get too rough.” 

“Go on. Keep mocking my pain, if it gets you to the natural history museum faster.” He pulled a laser pointer out of a drawer. “Here, take this with you. This is how they did it. Refraction through the very gems they stole, to keep the motion sensors from going off.” 

John took it, and looked it over in his hand. “With a cat toy?” 

“It’s probably more classy than this. But same concept. Drives cats insane in the dark, and messes with security lasers.” He handed over one more thing. “Take the little iPad. I’ll tell Molly I lost it or threw it against the wall or something. She just plays games on it anyhow.” 

“If we break this, I am telling her you said that.” 

Sherlock pointed to the door. “Because I need my ears twisted some more.” 

John grinned, zipping up his coat. “Don’t wait up, sweet cheeks.” 

“I have to, I’m the one deducing,” Sherlock said smartly. “Honeybun.” 

They both made a face. “Let’s never do that again,” John said, wincing like he’d just bitten into something bitter. 

Sherlock nodded. “Agreed. It never happened. Now let’s get out there and solve an incredibly not-complex museum theft!” 

“Go team?” John asked before closing the door behind him. 

Sherlock just smirked and shook his head. Yeah. He had everything he needed here. And not just what he needed--what he wanted. 

Though they could probably do with another iPad in the house.

THE END.


End file.
